Our Authority Figures
January 29, 2012
(Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany)
by the Very Rev. Peter DeVeau, Dean
“For my present this year, I want you to take the children to church.” It was grandma speaking to her child about her grandchildren. There are probably a number of ways this same sentiment is expressed: a family member, a loved one, a friend, hoping for a variety of reasons, that the people they care about will “get to church.”
Perhaps you’ve tried to get a teenager or a partner to come along to church on a Sunday morning. For many it’s a hard sell. It’s tough. I’ve been there and done that. The people we love tell us that church is “a waste of time,” “ a bunch of old people,” “totally irrelevant,” “not my idea of fun.” We could all supply a reason or two, which perhaps we’ve heard or spoken ourselves.
Commenting on a recent book by Mike Kinnamon titled, “You Lost Me: Why young Christians are leaving church…and rethinking faith,” a bishop of our church writes that for many young people church is “shallow.” He goes on to say, “Among this coming generation, the most common perception of churches is that they are boring, with easy platitudes, proof texting, and formulaic slogans.” Many young people “have been anesthetized by these, leaving them with no idea of the gravity and power of following Christ.”
I’m not so sure that the same doesn’t apply across the board. It’s not only young people thinking like this. We are all looking for a spiritual feeding, the real stuff, not the same old, same old, served up like leftovers in a b-grade cafeteria?
I’m convinced that the people who showed up at the synagogue in Capernaum, the same day that Jesus was in town and decided to attend because it was the Sabbath, were already looking for the weekly sustenance of teaching, and prayer, and community gathered. They did not expect what did happen. They came to understand better the power of what they already had, and to marvel at the presence of the one who made their quest for spiritual connection all the more exciting and real. For in their midst that day, Jesus taught. He taught with such authority that it brought a reaction.
A man in that assembly knew what was happening. Mark tells us he had an unclean spirit. Former generations would have called him, “possessed.” We would say it’s someone who forgot to take his meds. Mark would have us know, that this man recognized the depth, the authority that was before him. It was that power which banishes the forces that rebel against God. It was that power which heals. It was that power that shakes an unhealthy status quo so much so that it cries out in protest: “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.”
But Jesus rebuked him, saying, “Be silent, and come out of him!” And the unclean spirit, convulsing him and crying with a loud voice, came out of him.
I bet there were a bunch of folks in Capernaum who wish they had gotten up, dressed, and gone to meeting that day. This was not the day for nodding off in church, counting window panes, or scrolling through emails.
Writer Annie Dillard has her own way perhaps to describe the power of what happened in the Capernaum synagogue and of what young people may be looking for in a church and its preachments: She states, “On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside of the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews.” She concludes, “For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return.”
Wow. Annie has a way with words. So does Mark.
Once we get beyond the chemistry sets, crash helmets, dynamite, emergency-managing ushers, talking demons, Jesus rebuking, and a body convulsing and carrying-on, there is something that might even cause a teenager to look up. Jesus entrusts the church with an authority: the preaching of the good news that the kingdom of God has come near evokes a reaction. The word presented and received with authority, has an authority that transforms a community and brings healing.
“Silence! frenzied, unclean spirit,” writes Tom Troegger in a hymn written specifically for this gospel passage. Later on today it will be sung by the choir. Maybe you’ll want to have the words, printed in today’s bulletin, in front of you as you listen, or just listen, depending how you learn. Listen especially to the second stanza which talks about “demons” that inhabit our lives. I’m not talking about some malevolent spirit-creature that leads to the-devil-made-me-do-it kind of thinking, used to deflect personal responsibility or accountability. Nor do I hope to make light of anyone suffering from a mental illness.
Troegger, ever the poet writes in that second verse:
“Lord, the demons still are thriving
in the grey cells of the mind
tyrant voices, shrill and driving,
twisted thoughts that grip and bind,
doubts that stir the heart to panic,
fears distorting reason’s sight,
guilt that makes our loving frantic,
dreams that cloud the soul with fright.”
For each of us, much can stand in the way of lives that are healthy and not twisted by fear, ignorance, or loving for all the wrong reasons. Acknowledging and working on such things is ostensibly what you and I, with God’s help, are called to do. It seems that all too often in our lives and in the collective life of the Church we are more about ex-er-cis-ing demons than ex-or-cis-ing them.
It’s easier to let things remain as they are, not to stir things up or to rock the boat. Yet there is much of our behavior in need of hearing the command to be still, to get out, and to loose its grip over our lives. We can all fill in some blanks when it comes to this.
The gospel can strap us to the pews, if you will, and take us on a ride that will not land us in the same place, but in a new place. Here is something we can ponder on this Annual Meeting Sunday as we meet for the governance, well-being, and future of this congregation. There is a world out there that is looking for faith and practice that is authentic and deep. Judgment already has been made that seriously doubts that this could ever be real or hold truth. I suspect that the same yearning and questioning holds true for most of us here this morning.
We can be certain that this authority of Jesus is real when our lives are challenged, healed, and made new — when our souls are both stirred up to action and stilled with the peace that amazes. What is even better is when we hear the next generation saying, “What it this? A new teaching with authority! Take me with you.”
