"New Paths!-- Genesis 9:8-17, Mark 1:9-15-- Feb. 22, 2015

 

Surely you have heard that well-known Lenten song played in stores this time of year–"It’s the most wonderful time of the year..." ! No? Fr. Tom Gaughan of Sacred Heart St. Francis–St. John the Baptist parish has a sign in his office saying, "Happy Lent!" He’s had it since his days of working at Notre Dame University, and he says he still gets e-mails from students at the beginning of the season, wishing him a "Happy Lent."

That may not be your association with this season. Maybe you have memories of enforced fish on Fridays, of somber faces, of hymns only in a minor key, admonitions to give up something you love, be anything but happy. This was not a season of "good news"–after all, it’s the journey to the cross. But let’s not get Jesus on the Cross too soon, and let’s see what "good news," or "gospel," might be found that is deeper than the bad news, more resilient than death, present even amidst the suffering. Maybe we could be less hellbent on sin and death, as one pastor puts it, and more heavenbent on discipleship. (Rachel Hackenberg, CPR webinar)

Mark doesn’t dwell too long with Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness. With typical brevity and dispatch, Mark merely tells us that after Jesus had been baptized, "the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him." 2 verses. It is the Holy Spirit who sends Jesus out into Satan’s capable hands for testing, and he has the company of the wild beast and angels.

It’s hard not to bring in what we know from other parts of the tradition, from Matthew’s and Luke’s versions, where Jesus is tempted with bread and power and miraculous safety. Mark just says Jesus was tempted, or tested. "At root, [one commentator writes] all temptation is to forget who one is." (Bob Stuhlman, Stories from a Priestly Life, 2/16/15) Since Jesus had just been told by the voice from heaven, "You are my beloved son, in whom I am well-pleased," Satan was making sure he knew what that meant–not just a miracle worker, not a political leader whose soul could be bought, not an exceptional human being for whom the laws of nature had no hold. Better to get those out in the open before getting caught up in the demands and adulation of the crowds.

Actually, maybe it’s helpful that Mark just says Jesus was tempted in the wilderness without any further elaboration, because it invites us to imagine not only what Jesus might have been tempted with, but what we are tempted by. I can’t remember the last time I was tempted to turn stone into bread, but I have been tempted to worry more about what other people think of me than what God thinks of me. I find running for public office to hold zero attraction for me, but I have wanted to be in total control of my life. I tend more to back away from high places, without the slightest urge to jump off and fly, but I can spend an inordinate amount of time worrying over the weather and what that will mean for travel plans. And that’s just the beginning of the publicly suitable list of temptations I experience. There are plenty more where they came from, and some definitely not publicly suitable. How about you? There are the easy ones, having to do with chocolate or alcohol or shopping, maybe, but what about that root temptation–to forget who you are? For that matter, how many of us really know who we are in the first place? It’s tempting not to go that deep, isn’t it?

Another writer says that the greatest temptation is to think that God is not present. (Karoline Lewis, workingpreacher.org, 2/22/15) When we are in pain, when we are afraid, when the world seems to be going to hell in a handbasket, don’t we ask, "Where is God?" The real temptation is only to see God’s absence or God’s refusal to intervene–God has abandoned me–or forsaken me–which is why Jesus’ cry from the cross cuts through us so sharply. Yes, I know what that’s like. Where was God for those 21 Egyptian Christians beheaded by ISIS on the beach? Where was God when the bombs were flying between Gaza and Israel and the children were crying? Where was God in the Holocaust? On 9/11? Where was God when peaceful protesters were being bludgeoned and kicked on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama? Where is God in my depression? Where is God in my loved one’s battle with cancer? The greatest temptation is to think that God is not present.

So this Lent, let us take an honest look at who we are, and who we’ve allowed ourselves to become, not to simply wallow in guilt or regret, but as a way of getting back to our true Selves, or maybe to discover our true Selves for the very first time. Let us take the time of confession seriously, remembering that "confession" means "telling the truth." The written prayer may not reflect exactly who you are or what you have done, but it no doubt tells the truth of something of the human experience. In the silence that follows, sit in the truth of who you are and, perhaps, how you’ve wandered from that truth. That’s not the end of the service, of course, for we are always assured of God’s pardon, always given the chance to begin again, reminded that nothing in heaven or on earth can separate us from the love of God, which we know in Christ Jesus.

And I invite you to take an honest look at who we are as a church, as a community, as a nation, as a planet. I invite you to write on the Joys and Concerns sheet the things in our church or our nation or our world that trouble you, that need to be spoken truly of, that need to be held up to God’s healing light. Our ongoing racial divide, the growing chasm between rich and poor, ISIS, climate change, whatever is out there in which we, as citizens of this community and nation and world, take part in, whether intentionally or not. Let us tell the truth about who we are so that we might also remember who God calls us to be, who we truly are.

After his 40 days in the wilderness, "after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news." "Let’s do this thing!" When you think about it, good news might not be the first thing that might be on our lips after we’ve been tempted and tested by Satan. But that was on Jesus’ lips. The gospel is, as one woman put it, "a word from God embarassingly and disturbingly thrust into the present, announcing the gift of freedom in a time of captivity, the gift of peace to a world of conflict, and joy even as the

lamenting continues." [Liz Goodman, Journal for Preachers, Lent 2015]

The systems and structures and myths of our world "so often hold us captive and prevent us from imagining alternatives to their deadly ways," she says, so each week in Lent we’ll hold up those systems and structures and myths to God’s transformative power, "open a space where the new creation can be perceived." (Ibid., p. 10) Jesus emerges from being tempted to forget who he was and putting God to the test, as though God couldn’t be counted on to be present. That is the same old, same old way of the world. What Jesus preached was good news, new paths that lead to real life. "Re-lent," our UCC Lenten devotional books are entitled, and they offer us ways to... Re-lease. Re-form. Re-member. Re-kindle. Re-start. Re-vive. Re-form. Re-bound. Re-open. Re-claim. Re-invent. Re-boot...40 different ways. Let go of what doesn’t serve you or God.

"Give up indifference for Lent," Pope Francis urges us."I have decided to stick with love," Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said. "Hate is too great a burden to bear." Give up hate for Lent. "Faith and discipleship look like courage, vitality, humility, community, and hospitality, along with death and sin," a young colleague of mine says. (Rachel Hackenberg, op cit.). "Let us be less hellbent on sin, more heavenbent on discipleship."

So the journey begins. We do not travel alone, and we are not left with only bad news. There is good news in the midst of the struggle. Happy Lent!

Rev. Mary H. Lee-Clark

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“Epiphanies–So what?”-- Mark 9:2-9-- Feb. 15, 2015

Some weeks seem heavier than others. This week felt heavy, with the exception of a beautiful day on my birthday.

But there was word in the news of the death of Kayla Murray, the 26 year-old aid worker killed in the custody of ISIS, who wanted to serve and to alleviate the suffering of others. There was the tragic killing of 3 Muslim students in Chapel Hill, NC–Deah Shaddy Baraket, Yusor Mohammed Abu-Salha, and Razan Mohammed Abu-Salha; and the excruciating re-playing of Yusor’s conversation on StoryCorps with her 3rd grade teacher. How blessed she was to be able to grow up in the United States, she had said. The news business itself had shadows looming over it, not only as Brian Williams confessed to inflating the truth and Jon Stewart, understandably, announced his leaving from the Daily Show; but also the sad deaths of reporter Bob Simon and journalist David Carr. The snow and bitter cold didn’t help either, not only as travel plans were upset but as the homeless struggle for shelter and warmth.

And those were just some of the more public sorrows and heartbreaks. I daresay we might be able to gather up just as long a list of sorrows and disappointments known personally by us or by our friends and acquaintances. Wednesday I turned the age my brother Bob was when he died, just 8 months after he retired from the ministry. I’ve been thinking about him this week. What about you?

So here we are on the last Sunday in the season of Epiphany, Transfiguration Sunday, we sometimes call it, after the story in our gospel lesson today. “Six days later,” Mark begins his transfiguration story, 6 days after Jesus had told his disciples for the first time that he would be betrayed, rejected, would suffer, be killed, and 3 days later, raised. This mountaintop experience would change the way the disciples saw Jesus, and this epiphany of who he really was– radiant, beloved of God, not bound by death but able to keep company with those who had died–this epiphany would need to sustain them through the heartbreak of those terrible events that he predicted truly would come.

Metamorphothe is the Greek word Mark uses to describe what happened to Jesus. Transfigured, it usually gets translated here and in the other story Mark tells about this mountaintop experience, but in the only 2 other times it’s used in the New Testament, it’s translated, transformed. In Romans 12:2, Paul writes, “Do not be conformed to this world; but be transformed by the renewing of your minds...” And in 2Corinthians 3:18, he writes, “...and all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of God as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another.” It’s not just something that happens to Jesus. It can happen to any of us. In fact, one commentator notes that “we need transfiguration,” (Karoline Lewis, workingpreacher.org, 2/15/15) and we long for our own sense of glory, not in the narcissistic sense, but in that deep recognition that that radiance [which is what glory is] is in us as well.

This is a story about change and how we struggle with it, resist it–thus Peter’s blurting out, “Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” Let’s just stay here. This is a story about changing the way we see the world, one another, ourselves, and so transfiguration means exposure, vulnerability. Jesus is utterly lit up. Think of the light over an examining table in your doctor or dentist’s office. Exposed. Vulnerable.

But, as sociologist Brene Brown discovered in her research on shame and vulnerability, vulnerability is “absolutely essential for wholehearted living.” Vulnerability is not weakness, she says, but rather is the most accurate measurement of courage, the birthplace of innovation, creativity, and change. Connection is why we’re here, she says, and out of thousands of stories of heartbreak and disconnection, what emerged in her research was that a willingness to be vulnerable was the essential factor for wholehearted living and reconnection. “If we’re going to get back to each other,” Brown says, “vulnerability is the only way.” (TEDx Houston)

Transfiguration, transformation, vulnerability, as opposed to certainty and security, “seem absolutely essential for life and thus for a life of faith,” one Biblical commentator writes. (Lewis, op cit.) “Transfiguration means a new way of seeing the world. And replacing the lenses of our lives is a lot more complicated than picking out new fashionable frames. Because at the heart of the matter is that transfiguration not only signals change, but alters life’s direction.”

Ever since the beginning of January, we’ve been sharing “Epiphany moments” with each other–glimpses of God’s radiance or realm showing forth in the midst of our lives. We’ve heard about the surprising presence of loved ones who have died and yet are still very much present, even guiding us. We’ve heard stories of dreams, stories of connections with co-workers after listening to their grief, stories of seeing our children’s faces in new, fresh ways; and lots of stories of birds and experiences out in nature.

The poet Mary Oliver has spent her life finding epiphanies in nature. “I don’t like buildings,” she told Krista Tippett in a rare interview. “The world [though, meaning, the natural world] is: fun, and familiar, and healthful, and unbelievably refreshing, and lovely. And it is the theater of the spiritual; it is multiform utterly obedient to a mystery.” (Onbeing.org, 2/8/15) What do you pay attention to? Oliver asks us. Good question. Paying attention to the possibility of God’s showing forth in the ordinary, everyday events and places of our lives takes the focus off ourselves and puts it on God.

"I go down to the shore in the morning [Oliver writes in the poem of that name] and depending on the hour the waves are rolling in or moving out, and I say, oh, I am miserable, what shall– what should I do? And the sea says in its lovely voice: Excuse me, I have work to do."

“Attention without feeling is only a report,” Oliver says. “Attention is the beginning of devotion.”

Another pastor gave her congregation the Lenten assignment of looking for parables, which, as it turns out, are quite a bit like Epiphany moments. “Parable literally means “thrown alongside,” Anna Carter Florence says. As in, boom, now you don’t see it, now you do. One minute you’re just humming along, everything’s normal, and then, without warning, you just collide with some flash of insight, and you know for sure that the kingdom of God has come near and you just saw a piece of it. You don’t know why. You don’t know how. You’re just glad you happened to be paying attention in the moment it broke.” [Journal for Preachers, Lent 2015, p. 3] She goes on to tell her congregation, “When you see something, say something. [That’s the sign that’s all over public transportation stations in big cities.] That’s what being a disciple is about–when you see something, say something.” [Carter, op cit., p. 8] Homeland Security wants us to pay attention to potential danger. The Gospel calls us to pay attention to God, which can also be potentially dangerous!

So maybe this practice of looking for Epiphany moments, or looking for parables, should become one of our Lenten practices as well. Keep looking for signs, for glimpses, that the kingdom of God has come near, is coming near, because if you don’t pay attention to that, it’s so easy to become overwhelmed by all the heartache and heartbreak in the world, all the signs that the worst in human beings and random evil have won the day, that the cold grip of this arctic air mass is a metaphor for the icy hold that fear, insanity, cruelty, and greed have over us. “The only remedy for love,” wrote Henry David Thoreau, the only for love’s inevitable heartache and heartbreak, “is to love more.”

As we move from the season of Epiphany on this Valentine’s Day weekend and move into the season for Lent, let us keep our eyes and ears and hearts and minds open, to glimpses of grace, to signs of God’s kindom drawn near, to the presence of more Love which is the only remedy for heartbreak. And for that heartbreak, here, too, is a blessing--

Jan Richardson, whose images and blessings have been a blessing to me, wrote of finding all the cards and notes she had written to him in her husband’s things, as she gradually, painfully, goes through them after his death last year. After finding a handmade card with a heart on it, she recalls–“Looking at the card now, I think of the nurse’s words just after Gary died. I had placed my hand on his chest and remarked on how strange it was to feel a heartbeat and know it was only my own pulse. ‘His heart beats in you now,’ she said to me.” [http://paintedprayerbook.com/2014/02/10] “If you’re living with a broken heart right now, [Jan writes] or know someone who is, this blessing is for you. In the midst of the breaking, may our hearts never cease to open.

"A Blessing for the Brokenhearted( There is no remedy for love but to love more. – Henry David Thorea)

Let us agree for now that we will not say the breaking makes us stronger or that it is better to have this pain than to have done without this love. Let us promise we will not tell ourselves time will heal the wound when every day our waking opens it anew. Perhaps for now it can be enough to simply marvel at the mystery of how a heart so broken can go on beating, as if it were made for precisely this— as if it knows the only cure for love is more of it as if it sees the heart’s sole remedy for breaking is to love still as if it trusts that its own stubborn and persistent pulse is the rhythm of a blessing we cannot begin to fathom but will save us nonetheless." – Jan Richardson [op cit.]

May it be so. Amen.                                                                     Rev. Mary H. Lee-Clark

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"Rhythms of Grace"-- Isaiah 40:21-31, Mark 1:29-39--Feb. 8, 2015

 

In these days of the Great 500-year Rummage Sale that the Church is going through, when what isn’t working and needs to be let go of is often clearer than what needs to be held onto and what needs to emerge, there is a lot of hand-wringing and wondering what we in the church are supposed to be doing right now, while "the sale" is going on. I was at a meeting this week where such a conversation took place, and someone remarked, "Boy, you know, as we’re reading the Gospel of Mark now, it seems like Jesus is just preaching and healing, preaching and healing. And people seemed to flock to him. Of course, he had the advantage of being able to actually heal people." We may have the preaching thing down, but the miraculous healing part–not so much maybe.

I’ve been inspired this week by the commentary of Mark Davis, an Episcopal priest and scholar, who writes,

Mark 1:29-39 is a story that poses an enormous problem for me. In this reading, it seems like everyone in sight who is sick or oppressed by demons come to Jesus and he heals them right and left. It all seems instantaneous and complete. The lame walk, the deaf hear, and those who are oppressed by destructive forces are suddenly no longer struggling. The Easter message of the Christian Church is that the spirit of the Risen Christ continues to be present with us today. But, our lame limp, our deaf sign, and those of us who are oppressed by destructive forces cope and seek help. It seems like those stories are either untrue or that if the Spirit of the Risen Christ is present among us–if–then Christ is among us in a way quite different from how the body of the living Christ once walked among us..." [Left Behind and Loving It, 2/1/15]

I am sure that is true–that Christ is among us in a way quite different from how the body of the living Christ – how the body of Jesus– once walked among us. That has been the challenge and problem for the followers of Jesus from the first Good Friday on– how do we continue without him, at least in the way we’d come to know him? That’s why all the Easter stories are different; that’s why they all struggle to describe how they experienced Jesus’ presence after he died. He was really there; but then he wasn’t. We were all locked in that upper room, and then he was there among us. We didn’t recognize him on the road, but then he sat with us at table and broke the bread...and then he was gone.

Neale Donald Wasch, author of the Conversations with God books, transmits this message from an inspired place–"Honor the tradition but expand the understanding. That’s what religions must do right now if they hope to be helpful to humans in the years ahead." [cited by Kate Huey in sermonseeds, 2/8/15] Honor the tradition but expand the understanding.

Make no mistake about it. There are churches where the stories of healing are remark- able, and it’s not just the pentecostal, evangelical type of churches who claim this. Up at Grace Congregational Church in Rutland, the Rev. Bob Boutwell has a healing ministry that he’s been engaged in throughout his entire ministry career. Though now retired from parish ministry, Bob continues his healing ministry in regular healing services at Grace, in which at least one woman has been healed of her cancer. The doctors have no other explanation for it. The Healing Com-mittee of the Vermont Conference, of which Bob has been an important member, continue to present newly ordained and installed pastors with the bottle of healing oil for anointing the sick. Our own Jane Norrie has had a wonderful healing ministry among us, using her gifts of Reiki and listening to be bring comfort and healing.

Honor the tradition; expand the understanding. The story of Jesus’ raising of Peter’s mother-in-law [notice that Peter, the one who became the first bishop of Rome, was married, but that’s a topic for another time] –this story is one of those "troubling stories" as Mark Davis put it. Jesus heals her on the sabbath, first of all, which is only the beginning of his teaching about what the sabbath is for, and he simply takes her by the hand and "raises her up" from her sick bed, where she has been feverish and apparently gravely ill. So simple, yet so profound; and then there’s the note that once the fever left her, "she began to serve them." Some find this troubling too–that she didn’t even have time to recover or rest, but immediately begins to serve Jesus and the men with her.

But Peter’s mother-in-law was the head of this household. Her ministry of hospitality was what she was known for; it gave her dignity and worth. "What if resurrection [–being raised up] is being raised up to be who you always were and were always meant to be?" asks NT scholar Karoline Lewis. What if cooling this woman’s fever was just one aspect of her total healing, which was being restored to her place of belonging in the community? Jesus’ touch and taking her hand was an expression of or metaphor for love and presence, of relationship and intimacy, all of which are essential for real healing to take place. Whether or not any of us have a particular gift of healing, we can all offer the gift of presence, of touch, if it’s appropriate, of relationship. Honor the tradition; expand the understanding.

At sundown, that is, when the sabbath was over, "people brought those who were sick or possessed with demons to Jesus." Mark Davis thinks a better translation is "those who were demonized," that is, those who had been cut off from fully engaging in community. "And the whole city was gathered around the door. And he cured many who were sick with various diseases, and cast out many demons..." Day of Rest officially over! I imagine this going on late into the night.

And then we are told that while it was still very dark–is that an echo of an Easter morning story?–"while it was still dark, Jesus got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed." This was the necessary in-filling of power and grace for one who had been poured out and emptied the day before. "While it was still dark, Jesus got up and went out a deserted place, and there he prayed." This pattern is what made Marcus Borg, of blessed memory, as someone has put it so well, describe Jesus as a mystic with deep prayer habits. [Davis, ibid.] I wonder, in fact, if our neglect of these "deep prayer habits" is what limits our ability to heal.

Was this time in prayer, out in a deserted place, merely quiet contemplation, or did Jesus wrestle with God as to what he should do, where he should go next, should he set up shop, so to speak, in one place, and let people come to him, or should he keep moving? My guess is it was all of the above. And the guidance Jesus received was that he was to bring his message of God’s power and love to all the towns in Galilee, to all the "gaggles of gathering," as those early synagogues might be called [Davis] , away from the center of purity and holiness in the "Holy City." "Let us go on to the neighboring towns," Jesus told Simon and his companions after they had hunted him down, "so that I may proclaim the message there also; for that is what I came out to do."

So what might this mean for those us asking what we are to do in this inbetween time, in this time of evolving and devolving? What would Jesus do in this time? Honor the tradition; expand the understanding. The spirit of the Risen Christ is present among us in a way different from those days before the first Easter; but people are still demonized, still broken or wounded in body, mind, and spirit the way that human beings have always been. Preaching with our words and our lives the good news of God’s love is still our calling. As is healing. But wholeness, as Davis says, "is not measured by physical or psychological perfection, but by connection to human community," any more than it was in Jesus’ day. Those whom Jesus cleansed of leprosy were most importantly restored to their place in community. Peter’s mother-in-law was "raised to do the things that gave her purpose and meaning... The person who carried a sick one to Jesus walked home arm-in-arm with that one. Those are not stories of magic, [Davis contends]; they are stories of human community being healed from the brokeness that sickness, disease, and mental illness can bring." [ibid.]

So we too can offer a place of healing, a place of welcome without regard to age, race, sex, economic condition, disability or sexual orientation, as our Open and Affirming statement says. And remember, that if the spirit of the Risen Christ, the presence of the Living God is truly among us and within us, you may be the only Jesus some people will ever meet. This touching, listening, healing presence is more than a little outside the comfort zone for many of us New Englanders. That may be why New England is the least religious region in the country, unless you consider sports a religion, in which case New England is quite religious. We don’t think we need –let alone want–touching, sharing, listening, healing. We’re just fine, thank you very much. Go, Patriots! Go, Red Sox!

But might it be that there are some in our community – maybe even ourselves--who have been made to feel shame, not for what they’ve done but for who they are? Might it be that there are some in our community–maybe even ourselves–who are weary from the running and working and striving, weary from feeling like they have to do everything by themselves? Might it be that there are some in our community–maybe even ourselves–whose bodies are broken or diseased or worn out and wonder if they are of any value anymore? Might it be that there are some in our community–and our community in Christ extends throughout the world, remember–might it be that there are some who are tired of war and violence and cruelty and ostracism? Is the need for healing any less here and now than it was there and then?

Honor the tradition; expand the understanding. There is preaching and healing still to be done. There is returning to the Source in prayer and meditation for guidance, courage, and renewal. There is "power in being part of a community that acknowledges our weaknesses, our fragility, and our brokeness."[Davis] So that even if we aren’t a center of miraculous healing waters, where piles of discarded crutches and eyeglasses litter the lawn, we might still be part of God’s healing in the world. "When our lame limp, [Mark Davis suggests] we will slow our gait to walk together. When our deaf sign, we will sign back, to communicate. When our oppressed seek help, we will provide space for counseling, for meetings, for ways to live in hope. And for those who are too far gone physically to walk, too far gone mentally to converse, too far gone psychically to engage, we will be gathered at their door, so they will not be alone. That’s healing and wholeness."

Honor the tradition; but expand the understanding. So may we offer healing and hope to a broken and weary world. So may we keep returning to the Source of grace and renewal, both now and in the days to come. Amen, and amen.

Rev. Mary H. Lee-Clark

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"Wow! That’s power!"-- Mark 1:21-28-- Feb. 1, 2015

There is something special and memorable about "your first time." I’m talking, of course, about your first time at a new church, although you may now be thinking about other "first times." Go ahead–I’ll leave you to your memories and fantasies. Catch up with us whenever you can.

My "first time" here at this church was my candidating sermon back on Memorial Day weekend of 1995. I barely remember the sermon, of course, but what I do remember is 2 little girls who made me feel extraordinarily welcome–one was Lauren Beckerman, who, at the age of 10 back then, came up to me and gave me one of her sweet, loving hugs. The other little girl, whose family has long since moved away, came up to me after the service and after the vote, took my hand and pulled me toward Webster Hall. "Come, on. You’d better get in there before all the cookies are gone," she told me. Ah, how right she was!

So we should pay attention to how the four gospel writers describe Jesus’ "first time," how we see him as he begins his ministry. In Matthew, Jesus climbs up a mountain and begins to teach–Jesus is teacher and new law-giver. In Luke, he goes to his home synagogue, reads from the scroll of Isaiah about God’s spirit being upon him to preach good news to the poor and oppressed–and Luke’s Jesus continues to lift up the poor, has women in his ministry circles. Jesus’ first public appearance in John’s Gospel has him changing lots of water into wine at a wedding feast. He brings abundance. He is the gateway to God.

And here in Mark, Jesus begins his public ministry with confrontation. He is a boundary breaker, as one commentator writes [Karoline Lewis, workingpreacher.org, 1/25/15] The heavens are torn apart at his baptism, breaking through the boundary of heaven and earth; he breaks the boundaries between clean and unclean as he exorcises the demon from the man who appears in the synagogue; he will even break the boundary of death, going to all those places where God is not expected to be.

So, here in the very first chapter of Mark’s gospel, Jesus is teaching in a synagogue in Capernaum, and the people remark about the "authority" with which he preaches, not like the scribes. The scribes had "authority" of their own, by means of their position, their credentials; but the authority of this "newbie" rabbi was different. An unjust judge or public official can have authority, by means of their office. A police officer has a certain authority, with the expectation that his or her orders will be obeyed. But there is another kind of "authority" that anyone can have. It has to do with the root of that word–"author." "The simplest, poorest person in the world," writes one woman, "can speak with a different kind of authority if they embody wisdom and integrity that others find compelling." (Kate Huey, sermonseeds, 2/1/15) Who is the "author" of your words or actions? Is it from your truest self, or are you trying to borrow someone else’s "authority"? It’s the same root as the word "authentic."

"They were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority; and not as the scribes."

"Just then there was in the synagogue a man with an unclean spirit." In this place that’s supposed to be so "holy," so "clean," there (already) was a man with an unclean spirit. People sometimes say, "Oh, I’m afraid the walls would cave in if I entered the church," as though only "the perfect" go to church. Dare I point out that you and I are here within these walls, and other than that explosion back in the ‘60's, the walls haven’t caved in. People sometimes accuse us churchgoers for being hypocritical because we don’t always do what we say we believe. That may be true, but that is precisely why we need to gather with other folks struggling to line up their actions with their beliefs. "Just then in the synagogue, in the church, there was a man, there was a woman–or two or three or a hundred–with an unclean spirit."

So Jesus is confronted, first thing, with a man with–or "in"–an unclean spirit. I give thanks that it was a couple of little girls and not a demon who confronted me when I first came to this church! Nonetheless, as Bruce Epperly points out, this "unclean spirit" is more perceptive than the synagogue crowd in recognizing who Jesus is. [processandfaith.org. 2/1/15] "What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God."

John Pilch says that our ancestors in faith believed spirits were more powerful than humans but not as powerful as God. [Cultural World of Jesus, Year B] This story, then, shows that Jesus has more power than ordinary human beings. We have more control over our lives and more power to effect change in them than did our ancestors, and so we are likely to dismiss stories of demons and spirits as irrelevant to our modern lives, a primitive way of explaining mental illness or epilepsy. But is that really true? We may not speak of them as "demons," but are there not forces that too often we seem to be at the mercy of ? The first of the 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous states that "we admitted we were powerless over alcohol." Demon Rum is what the prohibitionists used to call it. We are the most in debt, obese, addicted , and medicated adult cohort in U.S. history, sociologist Brene Brown reports.(TEDx Talk, Houston) Dianne Bergant talks about "demons of dysfunction and sin, ...of mistaken expectations that we find ourselves caught up in before we know it." (Cited by Huey, op cit.) In his book Engaging the Powers, the late Walter Wink wrote of ours as a society that is possessed by violence, by sex, by money, by drugs. You might want to test that out as you watch the Super Bowl this evening.

"What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God." Mark Davis translates this passage, "Just then there was in their synagogue a man in an unclean spirit, and it squawked out..." [Left Behind and Loving It, 1/26/15) He refers to a recent NY Times article by Johann Kari entitled, "The Likely Cause of Addiction...and It’s Not What We Thought." The "likely cause," the article claims, appears not to be simply chemical dependency, but rather the need for connection. It’s a fascinating article worth reading, but one of the things it does is separate persons with addictions from their addictions. "It’s not you," the author says. "It’s your cage."

So this man is in the cage of unclean spirit which squawked at Jesus. "What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? ...I know who you are." This mix of us and I, plural and singular, gives a sense of the complexity of mental illness and addiction. Was the spirit afraid of being destroyed or hopeful of being healed? Neither mental illness nor addiction are outside God’s loving touch and healing.

Pseudo-Dionysius, writing in the late 5^th to early 6^th centuries, said that the demons come from their source as Good. However, he wrote, "They are evil insofar as they have fallen away from the virtues proper to them. They have changed in the domain of what was permanent in them. A weakness has appeared in the angelic perfection suitable to them." "He could be writing about me," Episcopal priest and author Suzanne Guthrie wrote last week. He could be writing about any of us.

I know that some of you find our prayers of confession to be needlessly remorseful and oftentimes not true to your reality. Amen. AND (not "but," AND) it is important that we check in every now and then to see if we, like those 6^th c. demons, have "fallen away from the virtues" that were given to us, have distorted what is inherently good in us, have wandered off the path toward our true selves that was set before us. How else will we be authentic?

Thomas Merton wrote about the early Desert Fathers and Mothers in the 4^th and 5^th centuries–

What the Fathers [and Mothers]sought most of all was their own true self, in Christ. And in order to do this, they had to reject completely the false, formal self, fabricated under social compulsion in ‘the world’....The simple men [and women] who lived their lives out to a good old age among the rocks and sands only did so because they had come into the desert to be themselves, their ordinary selves, and to forget a world that divided them from themselves....We cannot do exactly as they did, but we must be as thorough and as ruthless in our determination to break all spiritual chains, and cast off the dominion of alien compulsions, and to find our true selves, to discover and develop our inalienable spiritual liberty and use it to build, on earth, the Kingdom of God." [The Wisdom of the Desert]

Jesus has been in the wilderness for 40 days and nights, being tested, honing who he really is–where his true authority lies and who his authentic self really is. He begins his public ministry here in Mark with a confrontation, which he can only survive if he stays grounded in the truth of who he is, and which will set the tone for the whole rest of his ministry. He "comes to oppose all those forces that keep the children of God from the abundant life God desires for all us, David Lose points out (inthemeantime, 2/1/15).

What forces keep you from the abundant life God desires for you? What is keeping you from being authentic, with your own authority? What are the demons that possess you, or at least flit around in your head suggesting any number of distortedly truthful things? Anger? Fear? Workaholism? Substance abuse? Peer pressure? Affluenza, thinking that having all sorts of material things will bring you happiness? "What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us...or to heal us?" Is the demon searching for the Author of his life?

The image of Jesus as exorcist [writes Rita Nakashima Brock] is someone who has experienced his own demons...The temptation stories point to the image of a wounded healer, to an image of one who by his own experience understands vulnerability and internalized oppression. In having recovered their own hearts, healers have some understanding of the suffering of others.

Naming the demons means knowing the demons....The Gospels imply that anyone who exorcizes cannot be a stranger to demons...To have faced our demons is never to forget their power to hurt and never to forget the power to heal that lies in touching brokenheartedness.... Jesus hears, below the demon noises, an anguished cry for deliverance. Through...mutual touching, community is co-created as a continuing, liberating, redemptive reality." [in Imaging the Word, Vol. 3, p. 130]

"Our God is a God of the needy," someone else has said, "and our church is a fellowship of the needy...What it takes is for you to recognize your deep need and trust that God [in Jesus] is able to meet it." That was where the power of Jesus resided–in his own deep need and trust in God, the Author of his–and our-- life. If we are to follow him, that’s not a bad place to start.

So come, as if it were the first time, come to the table. In bread broken and shared, in the cup poured out and emptied, we are made whole and given new life. Amen, and amen.

Rev. Mary H. Lee-Clark

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