Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany, B, February 1, 2015; The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz
O God of love, grant us the wisdom, the strength and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it will. In our reading from Deuteronomy this morning, the last book of the Torah, we hear a portion of the section of Moses’ teaching about developing and maintaining the welfare of the community. A couple of chapters earlier, Deuteronomy has taught, “If there is among you anyone in need within the land that you inhabit, do not be hard-hearted or tight-fisted toward your needy neighbor. You should rather open your hand…give liberally and be ungrudging when you do so…open your hand to the poor and needy neighbor.” Compassion is one of the hallmark values of Deuteronomy. [1] Compassion is an ordering principle for Torah and Gospel. So in our Torah portion, Moses gives assurance to folks who worry about what they will do without him, that the Holy One will raise up prophets (plural) for the community – in every generation. He says, “Pay attention to them because this is what you asked for.” I love the line “If I hear the voice of the Lord my God any more, I will die.” I don’t think we need to take that literally any more than we should take verse 15 literally when it says that someone who offers prophesy in the name of other gods or says what has not been commanded must die. Indeed, the rest of the instruction is unfortunately, probably tragically, left out. Verses 21-22 read, “You may wonder, ‘How can we recognize a word that the Lord has not spoken?’ If a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord but the thing does not take place or prove true, it is a word that the Lord has not spoken. The prophet has spoken it presumptuously; do not be afraid of him.” We do wonder how we can know, whether a prophecy is from God or not. Well, wait and see, says Moses! But for how long, O Lord? Former Chief Rabbi of the UK, Lord Jonathan Sacks has written helpful commentary on this passage. In it, he explains: “a prophecy is not a prediction. Precisely because Judaism believes in free will, the human future can never be unfailingly predicted. People are capable of change. G‑d forgives… There is no decree that cannot be revoked. A prophet does not foretell. He [or she] warns. A prophet does not speak to predict future catastrophe but rather to avert it. If a prediction comes true it has succeeded. If a prophecy comes true it has failed…. The real test of prophecy is not bad news but good [news]. Calamity, catastrophe, disaster prove nothing. Anyone can foretell these things without risking his reputation or authority. It is only by the realization of a positive vision that prophecy is put to the test. So it was with Israel’s prophets…They warned of the dangers that lay ahead. But they were also, without exception, agents of hope. They could see beyond the catastrophe to the consolation. That is the test of a true prophet.” [2] In our Epistle, Paul (a true prophet) is writing to the gathered community in Corinth to address a conflict about what is ethical behavior when it comes to eating meat that had been sacrificed to idols. Apparently some people were using the power of their intellectual reasoning or theological knowledge to trip up people who were not as agile or strong. Paul was cautioning them not to let their exousia – their strength, ability, liberty, authority, become a stumbling block for others. For Paul, it’s a problem to exalt knowledge over love – love must be the ordering principle, the ultimate authority for the well-being of the community. Individual adjustments in behavior must be made to benefit the communal body. Do you know the guideline (mistakenly attributed to Buddha) that before speaking in a community, one should ascertain whether the information about to be shared is true, beneficial, and kind? (Keep it in mind for annual meeting next week!) The scandal of eating meat sacrificed to idols may seem irrelevant to us. But a corollary might be a program that has gotten popular in the church among young adults in the last few decades called Theology on Tap. Parishes sponsor theological education sessions in bars and generally attract large numbers of young adults. Is it a creative and fun way to impart knowledge and grow participation in the church among an age demographic that is underrepresented? Yes. Is buying a drink in a bar intrinsically unethical or immoral for a Christian? No. Is a Theology on Tap program a stumbling block for those who can ill afford to be buying drinks in bars either because of alcohol addiction or the danger of misuse of alcohol, or the financial expense? Yes. I think Paul would say, don’t do it. I think Paul would say, “If Theology on Tap is a cause of their falling, I will never lead a Theology on Tap event, so that I may not cause one of them to fall.” Now, do I follow all of Paul’s instructions? No, but this one I do because I am the rector of the parish that started the Emmanuel Movement in 1905, a precursor to AA. I am the rector of a parish that hosts ten addiction recovery meetings every week to help people gain and maintain sobriety. Supporting addiction recovery is an exercise of exousia. This exousia that Paul is talking about is also at the heart of our Gospel lesson from Mark. Exousia, translated as authority, also means ability, power, or right, or liberty or license. Jesus taught with it – with a kind of power or freedom that those employed as religious scholars did not have, in Mark’s opinion. It’s possible to read this as descriptive and not derogatory against the scribes. But it’s generally understood as a potshot at the religious scholars of the day. It signals a trend that will eventually grow into violent Christian anti-Semitism. I don’t want to linger there, and yet I cannot skip over it without comment. We Episcopalians actually are quite like the scribes. Scholarship matters to us. Tradition matters to us. Laws matter to us. The authority – the power — of scripture matters to us. Jesus had something in his teaching that the scribes didn’t demonstrate – and it was powerful and liberated, authoritative and liberating. It was thrilling to some folks and disturbing to others – it was healing for some and threatening to others, according to Mark. Exousia is most often associated with casting out demons in Mark’s Gospel. According to Mark, the first day of Jesus’ fishing for people ministry was a Sabbath. Jesus did some amazing teaching on that Sabbath day at the town’s gathering (or the synagogue) in the lakeside town of Capernaum. But Mark doesn’t tell us what Jesus was teaching, because Mark wants to get right to the important thing – the first of a dozen healings – or maybe it would be better to call them “freeings.” Jesus’ first miracle, according to Mark, took place when an unclean spirit in a guy started shouting at Jesus. The unclean spirit in the guy asked Jesus, “have you come to destroy us?” And Jesus tells the unclean spirit – the demon – to be silent and come out of the man. In other words, yes, Jesus has come to clean up the mess of unclean spirits. What Jesus tells the unclean spirit is “shut up and get out of him!” Jesus did not say, “be silent” to the demon. Jesus said, literally, “put a muzzle on it” to the polluted spirit that was in possession of a man in the Sabbath gathering of the faith community in Capernaum. (I wanted to read “shut up” today but I thought it was better to wait until the kids were out of the sanctuary!) Mark is setting out to introduce Jesus as someone with remarkable skills both in teaching and in sending demons packing. It’s a kind of show and tell scene – or tell and show in this case. The amazing teaching part is easy enough to believe, isn’t it? I hope we’ve all experienced that at one point or another in our lives. The exorcising demons part is a little sketchier. People in my generation might think of the horror movie of the early seventies, The Exorcist. And if it’s not The Exorcist, I bet you’ve seen at least one science fiction film in the same genre. There’s a way in which those sci-fi stories dramatize oppressive forces (demons) that are often much more subtle in polite society – demons that we all live with, which limit our capacity to give and receive love, which limit our capacity for compassion. You know, in Mark, demons always know that Jesus is the Holy One of God – the disciples don’t seem to get it, but the demons always do. In fact, in Mark, one real sign of the effectiveness of Jesus’ ministry is when oppressive forces start screaming bloody murder. And Jesus demonstrated surprising authority (power or license) over those oppressive forces that backed people into narrow places, that pushed people down, that put the squeeze on, that limited life and freedom. Jesus wasn’t only proclaiming freedom – he was enacting it. In his book entitled, A Costly Freedom, Brendan Byrne asserts that “unless we make some effort to relate [the conflict with the demonic] to our world we shall not really come to terms with the gospel [of Mark] at any great depth.” He goes on to define what he means by demonic: “forces…transpersonal and socioeconomic, that stunt human growth and freedom, alienating individuals from each other and from their own true humanity.” [3] I bet many of us believe in the demonic when it’s put that way – “forces that stunt human growth and freedom, alienating individuals from each other and from their own true humanity.” We don’t have to agree on the sources of those forces to agree that human growth and freedom is not what it ought to be! So I wonder, how do we get what terrifies us or shames us into alienation, into division and estrangement, out of our heads, out of our communal psyches? I don’t want to suggest that we should all become Jerks for Jesus, shouting “shut up and get out!” We’re Episcopalians after all. But I often wonder if, in our disdain of over-confident, overly pious Christians, we become under-confident about our own God-given authority and power to set others free. What if we stopped shrinking from or tolerating those unclean spirits – those oppressive forces — those demons – that terrify us or shame us into alienation, separation and estrangement? What if we could get clearer that the forces, which alienate and diminish the dignity of human beings, are decidedly unwelcome? Exorcism is an act of liberation from a spirit that has gotten separated from the Holy One for whatever reason: enmity, cruelty, jealousy, greed, disregard, domination, shame, the list goes on and on. By contrast, exousia – is the power of choice – of freedom. It comes from truth telling, accountability, the assertion of human dignity, giving and receiving love in the midst of struggle. Asserting exousia recalls the spirit back to its divine task, which is to serve the well-being of the world. What if we could expand our capacity for assertive and non-violent responses to the unclean or diseased spirituality that shouts in our own heads, in our homes, in our parish, on the street – wherever? After this encounter that Jesus had in the synagogue, right away, Mark says, right away the word began to spread. In the epilogue to his book The Powers that Be, Walter Wink wrote: “The passion that drove the early Christians to evangelistic zeal was not fueled … by the desire to increase church membership or to usher people safely into a compensatory heaven after death. Their passion was fired above all by relief at being liberated from the delusions being spun over them by the [demons – the spirits that have been separated from the Holy One].” Being freed compelled them to set others free.” [4] Let’s go and do likewise.