Looking at the Gospel reading for today (Mark 1:21-28),
it’s one that may be off putting, raise questions
or simply be dismissed as arcane –
demon possession? really?
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 revelation at Mt. Sinai was like the whole mountain was ablaze
and God’s voice was like rolling thunder.
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 they 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 literally means they were struck out of their wits.
If Jesus were the prophet that Moses said
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,
is suddenly 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 is there in the way I carry out my religion
that 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.
Let Jesus, the prophet standing between us and transcendent divinity,
cast out the demons hidden in the dark recesses of our hearts.
Let yourself be known to God,
and know that in spite of yourself,
you are most profoundly loved.
