The Demon of Fear

 Looking at the Gospel reading for today,

            it’s one that may be off putting, raise questions 

                        or simply be dismissed as arcane –

            this business of demon possession and exorcism. 

But it needs to be addressed,

            and don’t you want to know how this passage might relate to us?

 

But before I can open the Gospel for you,

            we have to start with the passage from Deuteronomy.

 

This Deuteronomy lesson for today is about making sure 

            that there will be a prophet 

                                    who can bring the revelation of God to the people,

                                    but also someone who will stand between God and them.

Quoting from the passage:

This is what you requested of the Lord your God at Horeb 

on the day of the assembly when you said: 

“If I hear the voice of the Lord my God any more, 

or ever again see this great fire, I will die.”

 

The people were afraid of getting too close to God.

God is too risky.

 

So the prophet standing between the people and God

            could mediate the risk,

            and could deliver the words but one step removed from direct contact.

 

Such is the typical human response whenever we have an encounter with God.

God is so far beyond us, so much bigger, so much more powerful

            Omniscient, almighty, omnipresent, eternal, transcendent.

Before God we are exposed, so fully known that we are frightened

            because we know that the thoughts of our hearts 

                        are not all sweetness and light,

                        not fully loving 

                        mixed with jealousy, anger, covetousness, striving…

                                    shall I go on?

If there wasn’t a Moses or a prophet standing between us and God,

            we would faint in sheer terror.

 

So the human tendency is to find something to be a protective barrier, 

            a shield between week human flesh and the Divine Presence.

 

For Moses and the Children of Israel it was to build the Tent of Meeting,

            the Tabernacle to hold the Ark of the Covenant 

                containing the stone tablets with the Torah, the Law carved into them

                                                                                                by God’s own finger. 

As the decades and centuries passed,

            the Tent of Meeting was replaced with the Temple in Jerusalem.

As one entered the Temple complex 

            one went from one holy area, the Court of the Gentiles,

                        encircling an even holier space 

                                                where only Jews could enter

                        and this space in turn encircled the holy Temple

                                                where only the men could enter

                                    and housed within this space was the Holy of Holies

                                                where only the High Priest could enter.

 

Do you get the picture?            The way the religion was practiced

            ensured a safe distance between oneself and God through architecture.

 

This is a familiar pattern in all religions, our own included.

 

We design the church building with space between the people and the altar,

            and we put a fence around the altar.

I remember well as a child being told that I dare not go beyond the altar rail,

            for only the priest and the acolyte and the altar guild could go there.

 

Amazing as it may sound 

            how we do church can be a barrier between the soul hungry for God

                        and an encounter with the Holy.

 

So Jesus and his newly minted disciples 

                        - Peter and Andrew, James and John - (from last Sunday’s reading)

            went to Capernaum and as it was the Sabbath went to the synagogue.

 

And Jesus taught in the synagogue,

            and the text says that the people were astonished.

Well, the Greek word here was significantly stronger.

            They were astounded, amazed, overwhelmed –

                        and specifically overwhelmed with fright.

            It is a word that means they were struck out of their wits.

 

If Jesus were the prophet Moses said that God would raise up from among them, 

            then this prophet was no barrier standing between them and God.

This prophet was in effect removing the veil of the Temple

                        that separated the Holy of Holies from before them.

 

So they were talking among themselves about the way Jesus taught,

            that he had an authority of his own,

                        not like the attributed authority of the scribes 

                        that came from their study and their scholarly credentials,

            but an authority that exuded from him and his obvious integrity of being.

 

Now one person in that synagogue, one of the regular “church goers,”

                        a member of the congregation,

            suddenly is yelling at the top of his lungs,

                        “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.” 

This man, unrestrained by the social niceties and norms,

            is saying aloud what is in the dark recesses of every human heart – 

                        the terror of direct encounter with God.

So Jesus liberates this man from that spirit of terror,

                                    that sees its destruction in the presence of the God.

            It must have been quite a scene.            Imagine the gossip afterwards.

 

Here they all were, coming to synagogue week after week,

            and then Jesus shows up and the Kingdom of God has come near,

and their old, familiar, next door neighbor sitting with them in church

            explodes in a screaming fit because Jesus isn’t talking like the rabbis;

                        Jesus is bringing God much too close for comfort.

And Jesus handles it all with such authority

                        that their fellow parishioner,

            whom they probably never would have suspected as possessed by the devil,                                     is relieved of his demon by a word.

 

The people of Capernaum are amazed.

And again that’s another Greek word here that means more than simply amazed.

            Again, they were astonished, awestruck, and, yes, terrified.

 

A new teaching – this time not a teaching of words, 

            rather a teaching that flowed out Jesus, out of his very self,

                        not from the tradition and lineage of the scribes and rabbis,

            but a teaching that removed barriers, 

a teaching that brought them face to face with God.

 

So what is the lesson for us here today?

What are the barriers between us and an encounter with God?

We may even have to ask ourselves,

            what in the way I carry out my religion

                        is actually a protective curtain between me and God

            so that I don’t feel so naked and exposed                 and so fearful?

 

Jesus was not someone people could feel neutral around.

            And if we are not reacting one way or another about him now,

                        we need to check what veil we have put up.

 

My spiritual director once said,

            “We don’t know the extent of our own demons until Jesus shows up.

            Then you know that the love is there in both of you,

            but in Jesus it is free flowing, and in you it is all bound up.”

 

One thing I do know with all my being,

            I know what it is to have that encounter with God

                        deeply personal, yet also beyond personal,

            to realize that I am totally known through and through, nothing hidden,

and at the same time to realize that I am totally loved through and through.

 

This is the Epiphany moment – being known

                                                            and being loved in spite of what is known.

This is the Light event for this Sunday in the Epiphany season.

This Light requires of us a willingness to look directly at that Light.

This Light requires us to face and move into our fears,

            for if we don’t, that slows up this whole healing and reconciliation

                                    that this Light would bring us.