“The Inbreaking”
Mark 1:21-28
When I was a Junior and Senior in high school I went through a difficult spell.
I had always been one of the “good” kids, but for a number of reasons, I got in with a group of kids who were not mean people but were not heading in the right direction.
I felt extremely lost during this time of my life.
I knew I wasn’t being “myself.”
I was trying to fit in with a certain group.
One day while we were skipping school a group of us were crammed into a friend’s car, and on the speakers was a song by the band Pink Floyd.
The lyrics haunted me and made me sad as I heard them, “This is not who I am, I have become comfortably numb.”
Have you ever felt as if what you were doing was not who you are or who you were created to be?
Have you ever found yourself doing something that you know is wrong, but you feel like you have no control over the fact that you are doing it?
It’s like you can’t find a way out.
I used to feel this way about getting angry with my parents when I was young.
I would get in an argument with my mom or dad—and I didn’t want to do that, but I couldn’t help it.
I didn’t know how to avoid it.
I didn’t have the power; I didn’t have the authority.
We might find the same thing happening with our spouse or our children.
And we may think, what got into me?
It’s as if I was possessed.
I have been the man with the impure spirit in our Gospel Lesson for this morning.
Sometimes I still am.
I think we all have times when we are men and women living with unclean spirits.
They are those times when we betray our own integrity, when we are confused and lost, when we knowingly sin and cause harm or when we don’t do what we know we should do.
Can you relate to any of this?
(pause)
This brief section of Mark that we are looking at this morning is at the very beginning of Jesus’ ministry.
He has been baptized by John in the Jordan and heard the voice of the Father affirm Who He is: “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.”
Then, He went to the wilderness for forty days overcoming the temptations of the devil who was trying to make Him “be” someone that He is not.
After John the Baptist was put in prison, He started proclaiming the good news of God, “The time has come, the kingdom of God has come near.
Repent and believe the good news!”
That’s right, the Kingdom of God was breaking into our lost and broken world, fulfilling God’s promise to restore all things.
So, filled with the Holy Spirit, and now in the company of at least four followers, it is time for Jesus’ public ministry to get underway!
It’s time for the in-breaking of God to begin.
(pause)
There’s a man with an impure spirit in the synagogue where Jesus taught.
He’s not unique among them or us.
He represents where we all have been or where we are right now.
“What do you want with us, Jesus of Nazareth?
Have you come to destroy us?”
The people in the synagogue don’t tell the man to be quiet, to sit down, or to get out.
And that’s because he’s one of them and they are him.
He’s become so familiar and accepted in their lives and communities and so much a part of who they are that they neither react nor are they affected by him.
He’s not the unusual or strange thing about that day.
So, who is the unusual and strange one that day?
Jesus.
Jesus is the One Who astounds them and is so different from what they’ve seen or heard before.
They are so lost that the Good News of Jesus is what is strange and unusual.
“What is this? A new teaching—and with authority!”
I wonder if that happens to us too.
I wonder if sometimes we become so lost to ourselves, so self-alienated, so self-estranged, that the Good News sounds strange and a bit crazy to us.
“You want me to love my enemies? I can’t do that.
Don’t you know what they’ve done?”
“I should forgive how many times, Jesus?
Isn’t seven more than enough?
Didn’t you hear what she said, what he did?
They never change!”
“Those who live by the sword will die by the sword?
Jesus, don’t you understand that might makes right and peace is gained by superior firepower?
Now you are even telling me to turn the other cheek?
I am supposed to humble myself?
I am called to serve others?
No, that’s not how it works here.
What about my reputation, my ego, proving myself, and all those other things I’ve worked so hard to get?”
It seems the more we look at our lives and the world the stranger the Good News sounds.
And I think that’s more a statement about having an impure spirit than it is about the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
It’s a symptom of our Fallen, sinful state.
The great tragedy of our brokenness and alienation from God is that we tend to let the most familiar and craziest voices among us speak for us.
We are no longer surprised when the demonic shows up.
And when they show up they show up in the attitudes that deny human dignity, the powers that destroy life, the self-interest and greed that is all too prevalent.
We may not like it but we’re not too surprised by what’s on the news.
I mean, are we surprised when there is another terrorist bombing, another mass shooting, another scandal?
We often allow those outer voices to have a greater influence on our lives than that deep inner voice of truth and when we do we lose just a bit more of ourselves.
And so, we need a different voice to call us back to ourselves.
We need a new recognition of the ways our lives have become broken.
That’s what that Pink Floyd song did when it said, “This is not who I am…”
That’s what Jesus is doing in the synagogue in Capernaum today.
He is calling us back to Himself, and in doing so, He is calling us back to ourselves—to who we are—to who we were created to be.
“Have you come to destroy us?” asks the impure spirit.
And the answer is yes!
He has come to destroy the false voices in our lives.
He has come to destroy the powers that diminish and deny the fullness of life and human dignity.
He has come to destroy everything that is not truly us!
Notice how Jesus doesn’t reject the man with the impure spirit?
Instead, Jesus calls the impure spirit to come out of the man.
And it “shook the man violently and came out with a shriek.”
We are told that “The people were all so amazed that they asked each other, ‘What is this? A new teaching—and with authority!
He even gives orders to impure spirits and they obey him.’
News about him spread quickly over the whole region of Galilee.”
The in-breaking of the Kingdom of God has begun and the gates of hell cannot keep the Kingdom out.
And this is our hope!
This tells us that the way things are is not the way things have to be.
Do you ever find yourself betraying your own integrity?
Do you ever stop and look at the way you are living and wonder, “What in the world am I doing? How did I get here? This is not who I am!”?
Do you want your life to be different?
Do you want to stop causing trouble and difficulty for yourself and perhaps, for those around you as well…even those you love?
Do you want to become more or different than what you have become?
Do you sometimes act as an alien to your own life or as a stranger in your own skin?
The Good News is that Jesus is knocking…Jesus is here.
He wants to enter the synagogue of our life and call us back to Himself.
He will not run from or avoid our brokenness or avoid our pain—He stands with us in the midst of it.
He clarifies the truth about who we are and who we are called to be.
And He does it over and over and over again.
Not only that, He has the authority to destroy the impure spirits, to quiet them, and to call them out of us.
And as He does this, we find that the Inbreaking of the Kingdom of God is happening not just somewhere else or in someone else, but within our very selves as well.
Will you pray with me?
Lord God,
I have been the person with the impure spirit, and perhaps I still am today.
I have been the person in today’s Gospel Lesson.
Call me back to Yourself.
Allow me to see that this is not who I am, not Who I am created to be.
I want to stop causing difficulty for myself and others.
I want to be different than what I have become.
Lord, please tell the impure spirits in me to be quiet.
Call them out of me.
And I want You to take their place, and make me new.
Make me who I have been created to be.
In Jesus’ name and for His sake I pray.
Amen.
