Hello and welcome - If you’re here for the first time today, I welcome you! You picked a great day to join us because we’re kicking off a whole new sermon series that’s all about the miracles of Jesus.
If you’ve spent any time in or around church, or even if all of this is somewhat foreign to you, you still probably have some level of awareness that Jesus performed miracles! There are a lot of stories about them in the Bible. And for those of us who know these stories well, over time they may become a bit “too familiar.” We’ve heard about Jesus healing people, and walking on water, and feeding the 5000 so many times that the miracles have lost a bit of their luster. They’re just things that Jesus did – cuz he was Jesus.
But what if we refreshed our perspective a little bit over these next few weeks? What if we dove back into these stories to recover some of the wonder and awe that eye witnesses must have experienced? What if we borrowed that iconic lyric from the Broadway phenomenon, Hamilton, and put ourselves in “The Room Where It Happened?”
My hope is that by imagining proximity to these events, and paying attention to the details, these stories of Jesus’ miracles might come back to life for us and then help us to see where Jesus is doing these same kinds of miraculous things in our own lives and communities today.
The scripture Lauren read just a few moments ago is the very first miracle recorded in the Gospel of Mark. No one really knows Jesus yet – at least not outside his hometown – and Mark chapter 1 finds him leaving the familiarity of Nazareth and venturing out into the region of Galilee.
Along the beach of the Sea by the same name, Jesus stops to talk to some fishermen. Within moments he has convinced 4 of them to come with him, simply by offering to teach them a different kind of fishing – fishing for people. Nets, tools, equipment, boats, a father and some employees are left behind…looking after them with disbelief, furrowed brows, hands raised in indignation, and probably a few incredulous words hurled after them. “Where do you think you’re going? What about these fish? What do I tell your mother when she asks about you??”
This group of 5 now make their way down the dusty road. Along the way they begin to consider what they’ve just done. Who is this man whose invitation to follow was so easy to accept? They likely knew of Jesus before this moment. Perhaps they had met him before. John the Baptist had been busy in recent months announcing Jesus’ presence among them and we know that at least one of them, Andrew, had been a disciple of John first.
Whatever their connection to Jesus might have been before, they’re now in close proximity, walking side-by-side headed into the town of Capernaum – the town they were all from and the place that would become the jumping off point for Jesus’ ministry.
It seems like they arrived on the Sabbath, or perhaps just the evening before. But the very first thing they do is what many Jews would do on the Sabbath – they go to the synagogue. Rather than this being a space for formal worship, like we think of church today, it was more like a gathering of people to hear the Torah, to listen to rabbis teach their interpretation of the scriptures.
You can imagine, a small group of people gathered under a stone archway toward the back of the synagogue, seated so that they might catch the fresh, summer seabreeze through the door. Mothers lay out mats on the hard stone floor, wrangling their children to sit and be still. As the room settles down minds wander to the sabbath meal… “did I remember everything, will there be enough with the in-laws joining us today?” Men stand apart positioning themselves close to teacher’s seat so they can hear. Teenagers, dragged there by their parents to improve their knowledge of Hebrew scriptures stare absent-mindedly out the windows, watching the empty sails of idle fishing boats flutter thoughtlessly against the masts, tilted, at rest on the shore.
They’d much rather be with friends, feasting on figs, hanging ripe from the trees.
There’s a new teacher here today though. One no one has heard before. Everyone saw him walk in, with 4 disciples already flanking him. They all recognized Andrew, Simon, James and John. They were locals. Someone whispers, “That’s Jesus – from Nazareth. I see his uncle from time to time when he comes to town to trade after the harvest.” “Is he going to teach Torah today?” a now mildly interested teenager asks.
They don’t have to wait long to find out. Jesus assumes the seat of rabbi and begins to teach the people. At the sound of his voice, eyes snap open out of their boredom. Heads swivel around to get a better view – figs suddenly forgotten. Children quiet down even. This man speaks like he’s singing! He tells the story like it’s his own. He teaches as if he cares about the subject. Not like the other teachers of the law.
With everyone’s attention fixated on Jesus, no one notices the man steal in at the back of the crowd. His eyes are dark and sunken. His clothes hang loosely on his emaciated frame. He’s quiet except for the whisper of his strained breath. He’s nearly invisible as he slinks down the side aisle of the synagogue, closer and closer to where the Rabbi Jesus sat.
Then without warning, in the middle of Jesus’ sentence, the man erupts with a blood-curdling shriek. The kind that electrifies your very scalp, penetrates like ice to the core of your bones, makes every hair stand on end because it’s a sound of the very depths of worldly pain and other-worldly torment. The sound ricochets off every stone wall, disorienting everyone as to where it is coming from. The crowd covers their heads, their ears frantically reaching for those nearby to protect or be protected – their very souls feeling assaulted by the presence now in the room.
Jesus sees the source instantly. He stands and locks eyes as the man moves out of the shadows toward him. The screaming continues, only this time there are words. “WHAT HAVE YOU TO DO WITH US, JESUS OF NAZARETH? HAVE YOU COME TO DESTROY US? I KNOW WHO YOU ARE. YOU ARE THE HOLY ONE FROM GOD.” Mark 1:24
The voice calls out Jesus by name. Then demands to know why he is here. Then utters the first proclamation of his real identity: Holy One from God. The spirits of the evil realm know it before anyone else. The spirit seeks to take control of Jesus’ moment, his message, to commandeer his purpose for coming. And Jesus stops it in its tracks.
SILENCE! He commands. And every sound rushes out of the room like a tidal wave retreating back out to sea. Time seems to stop. Nothing moves. The silence is loud enough to crush an eardrum. “Come out of him,” Jesus says.
The man begins to shake, tremors at first beginning with his head and shoulders, but quickening to convulsions in his arms, his torso, his legs are swept out from under him as his whole body writhes on the floor and sound rushes back into the room in the form of one final, ghastly, piercing shriek.
Then as it feels like every last molecule of air is sucked out of the room into the screaming of the demon, the synagogue falls quiet again. Children carefully peek out between the fingers they’ve clamped over their eyes. Grownups venture to look sideways at one another, just to check and make sure everyone is still intact. The teenagers never missed a second – their eyes fixated on Jesus the whole time. The sounds of the world filter back into the space, waves rolling onto the shore outside, birds chattering across the gardens.
Jesus holds his gaze on the man, still lying on the floor. The man slowly lifts his body to sit and lean against a stone pillar, breathing deeply – but freely. He looks up to find an intense and powerful gaze of the rabbi looking deep into the place where something else had been just moments before. The rabbi sees that the man’s eyes are clear. Color is returning to his face. He is calm. He is free. He is himself.
As the crowd starts to breathe again, the adrenaline crash takes over and now they are the ones who begin shaking. “What just happened? That was a demon, right? Tell me you saw that too? Did the voice say the rabbi came from God?? ” The murmuring ripples throughout the room.
This is no ordinary rabbi. He teaches. But with authority. Evil spirits listen to him and obey his commands. Something new is about to happen in our midst. They could feel it and knew that life would never be the same. The youth took off running, racing to be the first to tell their friends what they had just seen. Mothers rounded up children and made their way home for the Sabbath meal, but not without stopping at every neighbor’s house along the way to share the good news that something divine and powerful was happening among them.
The men collected their things to leave the synagogue, but paused first for a moment to tend to the man. They had all grown up together. They used to be close. He stood quietly, but clear-headed and smiled at his old friends. They looked at him carefully, timid even – could the evil spirit come back? But his eyes told a new story. His demon had been silenced. He was himself again.
And because he belonged to himself again, he belonged to his community again too. The patriarch of the group wrapped his arm around the man’s shoulders and they all walked out into the sunlight together. His story now belonged to the world.
This story is a story about power. Jesus’ first public appearance in Mark’s gospel is one in which a miracle makes very clear what kind of power he holds in our world. Those who witnessed it first-hand felt it. They felt it charge the atmosphere of the room when the power of evil rose to challenge Jesus’ presence here in this world. With a word, Jesus vanquished it.
To sit in that room where it happened was to be changed, forever. The sounds, the clash, the trembling of everyone involved – these are things that stay with a person their whole life. What they experienced of Jesus’ power that day was first, that it is stronger than evil. That part they saw in the physical casting out of the evil spirit. But second that it’s a power that responds to suffering.
The demon-possessed man was lost to himself. Something else had taken over his life entirely. It had wracked his body, alienated him from his friends, isolated him outside of community – something every human being needs to thrive. And the miracle is that the power of Jesus met him in his suffering and removed it. Jesus returns the man to himself and to his community.
In the 21st century, demon-possession isn’t something that tops the list of our common afflictions. It seemed to be more prevalent in the ancient world as we have many stories of Jesus AND his disciples casting them out. There are documented cases of course in the modern era, that can’t be attributed to other psychiatric disorders or afflictions. I have no doubt there are still occurrences of evil spirits taking hold of a person’s physical and spiritual life.
(Of course, this is probably much easier to believe for ANYONE who has ever parented, or taught, or babysat a toddler. Demon-possession is often the only plausible explanation for much of what happens in that life stage. 😉 )
But by and large, a miracle like the one in the synagogue at Capernaum is not one we’re likely to see in our day and age. However, I DO think that the idea of possession is still relevant for us. Not demons, perhaps. But we are certainly susceptible to being possessed by something – giving over control of ourselves, our lives, our wills to something that is not God, and is not our true self.
What about our actual, physical possessions? Can our possessions possess us? I think yes, absolutely. Anyone who has ever had to move, like I have recently, can attest to the fact that our ‘stuff’ has power. It accumulates without us knowing it. It requires that we buy more stuff to organize our stuff (just last week I had to buy an entire piece of furniture so that I’d have a place to put 8 bajillion jigsaw puzzles that now reside in our home). The more stuff we buy, the more stuff we have to maintain. The fancier stuff we acquire, the more time we spend worrying about what could happen to it. The fuller our retirement accounts get the more time we spend looking after it and managing it to make more money and STILL wondering if it will ultimately be enough.
Our possessions can so easily possess us…until we are lost from ourselves.
Or what about our addictions? There is deep, sinister power in substance addictions of course. I know some of you or someone you know battle this kind of possession and it is terrifying. You know you are no longer yourself, but are powerless to find your way out. It’s a disease that has taken hold of you. If that is what possesses you, please know you have a safe space here. If you want help and you don’t know how to talk to a family member about it, please reach out to one of the pastors here. We can help you get the clinical support you need, and surround you with the spiritual support to bring you back to yourself and to your community. I have watched it happen and it is a beautiful, truly miraculous thing!
But there are other kinds of addictive behaviors too. They are as different as we are as people. Each of us has patterns of behavior, ways we cope, places we escape to to turn off the noise of life for a minute. Sometimes it feels harmless – like binge watching Netflix, or frequenting the casino. Shopping online to satisfy a need to consume. Or eating – because it just feels good when we feel sad. But does there come a point when the control flips? And our innocent, harmless behavior suddenly has possession of us? We discover we have lost sight of our real selves.
Or maybe we are possessed by our narratives. The stories other people have written on our lives. The stories we tell ourselves. Maybe you heard from a young age, “That’s not good enough. You can do better.” Or “You don’t belong here.” Or “If you don’t do it all, it won’t get done.” Maybe your inner monologue tells you now, “You’re the only one who matters.” Or “You’ll never be enough.” Or “Things will never change.” The narratives that underscore the song of our lives can take possession of us – to the point that we believe lies about who we really are in God – and we are lost to ourselves.
What possesses you? Possessions? Addictions? Narratives? Is it fear? Or worry? Or another person’s expectations of you? I suspect the list is as long as the number of people here today. We may not encounter demons from the spirit realm, but we certainly struggle and sometimes suffer under countless forces that possess us. But to those powers that threaten to keep us from living our own lives as our own selves, Jesus has one miraculous word. “SILENCE!”
His command has the same power today as it did in Capernaum. SILENCE cuts through all the noise, all the frenzy running through our hearts and our lives taking control over us. “SILENCE. Come out of him. Come out of her. Come out of them,” he says.
What might happen in your life, if Jesus spoke that word into it? If time stopped for a moment and the world around you grew quiet. Would it give you the miraculous space to step out of yourself for a moment to see who or what it is that really holds power over you? Would it calm your heart to hear his voice that can send what possesses you away? Who would you find inside yourself when the possessor had taken leave?
I suspect it would feel as frightening to us as it did to the man and the crowd gathered at Capernaum. Because our demons do not want to leave us. They shriek when they are sent away. But after the initial shock, I think you might find, like the man, that you’re a little battered but you are beloved by Jesus.
You might find that you feel very weak without the things that propped you up before, but you’re strong because you know who it is that speaks for you.
You might find that you feel more vulnerable to the people around you and that’s scary, but that’s also the very thing that allows them to accept your full self.
Is there a miracle for you in the silence? Can you ask Jesus to speak it into your life? At his command, the powers that hold us in the shadows of ourselves are driven out. That was true 2000 years ago and it is true now. Listen this week through the noise of all that’s going on around us for Jesus to speak “SILENCE” into your soul. And sit in it. Physically. Literally. Wait for the silence to take hold of your heart, as Jesus returns you to yourself – the YOU he created you to be.
I’ll close with a space for silence and then words from a modern hymn. They are Jesus’ words to you as he asks you to step into the life he is returning to your possession…
(silence)
Will you love the ‘You’ you hide
if I but call your name?
Will you quell the fear inside
and never be the same?
Will you use the faith you’ve found
to reshape the world around,
through my sight and touch and sound
in you and you in Me?
(The Summons, by John Bell, Copyright 1987, Iona Community, GIA Publications)
