Master of Life

The morning lesson today tells what happened one Sabbath in a synagogue in Capernaum. Remember that synagogues were and are places of teaching, places where the faith tradition is passed on and clarified for the faithful. The lesson tells about when a demon-possessed man came into this place of learning and reflection and disrupted everything with loud screams.

Jesus confronted the disruptive force with superior power. This should not surprise us if we are reading Mark’s Gospel from the beginning. The very first verse tells us that Jesus Christ was “the Son of God.” But Jesus’ authority did surprise those sitting in that synagogue. In fact, even before the demon-possessed man caused a ruckus, the people were amazed at Jesus’ teaching. He taught with a kind of authority unlike anything they had heard before. Jesus’ teaching had power.

What was that teaching? Mark’s Gospel doesn’t really tell us. In fact, compared to the other gospels, Mark records relatively little of Jesus’ teaching. We are not told its content but we are told its effects. Jesus’ teaching was the power to confront evil, the power to liberate, and the power to heal.[1] Let’s read it in Mark 1.

They went to Capernaum; and when the sabbath came, he entered the synagogue and taught. They were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes. Just then there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit, and he cried out, “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. They were all amazed, and they kept on asking one another, “What is this? A new teaching — with authority! He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him.” At once his fame began to spread throughout the surrounding region of Galilee.

We live in such a noisy world. That it is physically noisy goes almost without saying, what with our cars, trucks, airplanes, cell phones, and iPods. But it is spiritually noisy too. So much distracts our attention and drowns out what really matters. Confronting noise and finding silence that Kathleen Norris did when she occasionally worked as an artist-in-residence with elementary-school children. She made a deal with them. “First you get to make noise,” she said, “and then you’ll make silence.”

The noisy time was always predictably chaotic — shouting, screaming, stomping, and banging things. But the periods of silence that followed were amazing and creative. When the children were asked to write about it, Norris says, “their images often had a depth and maturity that was unlike anything else they wrote.”

A third-grader’s poem turned into a prayer: “Silence is spiders spinning their webs; it’s like a silkworm making its silk. Lord, help me to know when to be silent.”

And a little girl in a tiny town in western North Dakota offered a gem of spiritual wisdom that Norris finds herself returning to when her life becomes too noisy and distracting: “Silence reminds me to take my soul with me wherever I go”[2]

We need silence for our souls to grow and in that synagogue long ago a demon-possessed man disrupted the silence. The unclean spirit screamed, “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us?” Jesus silenced that disruptive spirit and in doing so was saying, “Oh, yes. I have come to destroy all that shackles people. I’ve come to free everyone from demons of guilt and greed and guile.[3] I’ve come to heal those who have no hope.”

Not only did the demon flee away but the people were amazed. This was a kind of teaching the likes of which they had never heard. Jesus’ teaching had power. Teaching always does.

Do you know Miss Lindbergh, Miss Hawley, or Mr. Rufer? Probably not, although you ought to because they are very powerful people. At least they have power over my life.

I mentioned Miss Hawley in a sermon last October. She was my high school English teacher for three years. She taught me to write and, as I said last fall, if I have any ability to communicate clearly, it began with learning how to write. Behind good speaking is good writing and Miss Hawley deserves the credit for that.

I think of Miss Lindbergh somewhat often even though I knew her more than fifty years ago. She was my first grade teacher. This was back in the dark ages before Sesame Street and preschools and many other ways that children learn to read today. So on the first day of first grade Miss Lindbergh showed us a bulletin board and pointed at one of several cars cut out of colored construction paper. Beside each colored car was a word. Miss Lindbergh pointed at the red car and asked what the word next to it said. I remember that John Gerde got his hand up first and answered “red.”

Many, many years later it dawned on me that Miss Lindbergh was not just teaching us how to read. She was also teaching us how to think, how to look at something and reason from what we observed to a valid conclusion. If I have any analytical ability, I think Miss Lindbergh deserves a lot of the credit for getting that started.

Then there was Mr. Rufer. He taught American Government in the last semester of our senior year. He kept insisting that there was a large, pink elephant in our classroom. Our grade largely depended on whether we could see it and describe it accurately. At first, most of us were frustrated by this and we thought Mr. Rufer was kind of nuts. But after awhile it began to dawn on us that Jake Rufer was trying to teach us to look for hidden assumptions and unspoken biases. Everyone has them, certainly government leaders have them, and they are just like pink elephants. They take up a lot of room, no one wants to admit they are there, and they can leave a horrendous, smelly mess. If I have any skill at looking beyond the obvious, give the credit to Mr. Rufer.

The truth is that in more ways than I can remember, Miss Hawley, Miss Lindbergh, and Mr. Rufer, along with many others like them, changed my life. When you think about it, that’s rather amazing. Here I am at age fifty-eight and these schoolteachers and their teachings from long ago are still influence me. They were paid poorly for their teaching. You never heard of them. Yet consider their power! After all, what is power except the ability to change things? Most of the people Mr. Rufer taught us about in American government were considered to be powerful people — politicians, generals, business magnates. Yet the one who interprets them and their deeds, the one who fixes them in our brains forever — the teacher — is more powerful in the end even than they.

What power teachers have. Teachers change lives. They create, through their teaching, new worlds. They have within their hands the power to terribly hurt or wonderfully heal young lives. Teachers are powerful people.[4]

It should not surprise us, therefore, that Jesus’ teaching was powerful. One of the most common titles for Jesus was “rabbi” and rabbi means “teacher.” People easily recognized Jesus as a uniquely powerful teacher. But what was it that made Jesus’ teaching powerful?

All teaching is powerful when the teacher has mastered the subject. You cannot teach something you do not know and the more you have mastered a subject the better you can teach it. Miss Lindbergh knew her subject. She knew how to start us reading and thinking at the same time. Miss Hawley knew her subject. She knew that some things are only learned through constant repetition and practice. So she made us write simple paragraphs over and over until we could do it in our sleep. Mr. Rufer knew his subject. He knew that as citizens we needed to not just know facts about American government. We also needed to see that hidden biases affect almost everything in political discourse and in the rest of life too. He also knew that sometimes you need to shock students to move them beyond simplistic ways of thinking. So he taught us about pink elephants.

Jesus’ teaching was powerful for precisely the same reason. He knew his subject. What is that subject? Life! The unclean spirit recognized that before anyone else. “I know who you are, the Holy One of God. Have you come to destroy us?” The answer is Yes! Jesus is the Son of God, the Author of Life, come to destroy all that is evil and all that disrupts human life and makes it less than God intended it to be. Jesus’ teaching was authoritative and powerful even to cast out demons[5] because he is the Master of Life.

It would be foolish of us to just think of demons as the things we see in scary movies or just the afflictions of people who are psychologically disturbed. The demonic is anything that disrupts life and keeps it from being what God intends. That applies to much of modern living. Life is confusing. There is much that seems out of kilter, chaotic, frighteningly inexplicable, as chaotic and confused as that poor, demented man who long ago barged into a synagogue screaming. But Jesus the teacher healed that man. Jesus silenced the raging spirits and taught the wondering congregation with amazing authority. For he is the Master of Life and he can teach us and heal us still.

Last week I was reading through some old papers in my study and I ran across a reminder of something that happened to me a few years before moving to Sudbury. It was a Saturday afternoon, about this same time of year. I was trying to finish my sermon for the next morning and the phone rang. It was a young man named Duane who needed help. He found my name in the Yellow Pages.

It turned out that Duane had AIDS. He was sick now most of the time. He had no family. His car was broken down along I-90, the other end of the Mass Pike. He was trying to sell it to get to the Mayo Clinic where he hoped he could be treated. His clothes were filthy and he has been living on the street or in his car. The story sounded preposterous. I didn’t know how much to believe. Yet on the other end of the phone was human being with a great deal of pain in his voice.

A lot of voices were telling me you’re too busy to do anything, let someone else help. But another voice, I hope it was the Lord’s, said “you better go.” So I gathered some clothes together and some money and met Duane downtown.

He was only twenty but the effects of AIDS made him look far older. As we sat in my car, his hands shook and from time to time his body convulsed. I shared with him what I had. I asked if he had a Bible. He didn’t. So I gave him one. I told him about the love of God. He said he knew God loved him but sometimes he was still afraid. I told him God would be with him no matter what happened and showed him where to read in the gospels. I told him I would keep him in my prayers which I did for a long time. I put my arm around him, we shook hands, and he went on his way.

Some might look at this and say nothing happened. I don’t believe that. I don’t know what became of Duane. But I believe that he went his way in the strong love of Jesus Christ, the Master of Life. I believe that the one who long ago silenced a demon now walked alongside of Duane and silenced his fears. Jesus’ teaching is the power to confront all that is wrong in life, the power to liberate, and the power to heal. For he is the Master of Life who offers grace for all — for Duane, for you, and even for me. Thanks be to God.

[1] Donald Booz, “The Exorcism of Ministry,” Biblical Preaching Journal 10.1 (1997): 12. Of the 678 verses in Mark, approximately one-third are stories about miracles. Mark specifically retells four exorcism stories (1.21-28, 5.1-20, 7.24-30, 9.14-29) and alludes to others (1.39). The first miracle Jesus performs in Mark’s gospel is on his initial visit to a synagogue where he exorcises a demon or unclean spirit. Unclean Spirit, evil spirit, and demon are used synonymously in Mark. In the context of verses 21-28, unclean spirit denotes an invisible spiritual being, neither human nor divine, alienated from and hostile to God. Mark follows the basic formula for describing an exorcism: (1) recognition of the demons; (2) verbal confrontation with the demons; (3) demons speak to the exorcist; (4) the need to prevent the discovery of the exorcist’s name by the demons. The synagogue provided the place for Jesus’ first exorcism in Mark. Traditionally, the synagogue functioned as a place of education and the center of the Jewish religious life. A devout Jew would not miss the Sabbath where a typical service included readings of prayer and scripture, a sermon, and a blessing. Normally, no ordained minister was present. However, the service leader might invite anyone of sufficient learning to participate in the service. Furthermore, a visiting Jew was often asked to teach especially when interpretation was a feature of the worship.

[2] Kathleen Norris, Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith (New York: Riverhead Books, 1998) 16-17.

[3] Ann Hoch, “What Do You Want with Us, Jesus?” Pulpit Resource 28.1 (2000): 20.

[4] A point well made by Willimon in his sermon on this text. William H. Willimon, “The Teacher,” Pulpit Resource 25.1 (1997): 21.

[5] James Richard Lahman, “Preaching the Lesson,” Lectionary Homiletics 8.3 (1997): 5. “In the four canonical gospels there are thirty-one different miracles performed by Jesus. There are seventeen “healing miracles” (those involving physical healing), there are eight “miracles of nature” (the feeding of the multitudes, walking on the water, the transformation of water into wine, etc.), and six “exorcisms.” The eight “Miracles of Nature” tend to bear a heavy mark of the early church. With few exceptions, biblical scholarship uniformly agrees that Jesus was a miracle worker. Most certainly Jesus performed exorcisms.”