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Those of us who grew up in the church and have come to the place in life where the stories of our faith have become kind of ho-hum need every once in awhile to ask ourselves, “What was it about Jesus that was so attractive to those who decided to follow him to the death, and so threatening to those who eventually killed him?”

Was it his call to love? Was it his willingness to heal? Was it the fact that he could turn water into wine or a few fishes and loaves into a feast for five thousand?

I don’t think so.

There was something radically different about Jesus that was a magnet for some and a repellant to others. We catch a glimpse of it in today’s Gospel reading.

Jesus is in the synagogue, teaching. People are amazed at the power of his teaching. There is a ring of Truth to his words that you don’t often hear in the synagogue. A man suffering with demon possession shows up. Jesus casts the demon out. The people say, “What is this, a new teaching?” And news about Jesus spreads like wildfire throughout the region.

Now there’s a radical experience for you! Do you see it? Maybe not. So let me ask you this:

“How many Community Church people does it take to change a light bulb?”

 (CHOIR) “CHANGE? Who ever said anything about CHANGE?”

What IS this? A NEW teaching?

If there’s anything that gets the attention of religious people it’s anything that’s NEW.

Mrs. S used to sit in the front row of the church where I grew up. Her self-appointed job was to sit there Sunday after Sunday – a bible in one hand, pen and paper in the other – jotting down anything and everything the Pastor said in his sermon that did not seem to her to be “biblical”.

Mrs. S was not one to want to hear anything different than what she thought she already knew. What IS this? A NEW teaching?

Even worse – in that church where I grew up – Pastor G. once preached a sermon that, instead of using a bible passage as a text, used the Beatles’ song, “Eleanor Rigby”. And he actually played the song in church on his newfangled fancy two-reel portable tape recorder:

Eleanor Rigby picks up the rice in the church where a wedding has been. Lives in a dream. Waits at the window, wearing the face that she keeps in a jar by the door. Who is it for? All the lonely people, Where do they all come from? All the lonely people, Where do they all belong? 

Father McKenzie writing the words of a sermon that no one will hear. No one comes near. Look at him working, darning his socks in the night when there’s nobody there. What does he care? All the lonely people, Where do they all come from?All the lonely people, Where do they all belong? 

Eleanor Rigby died in the church and was buried along with her name. Nobody came. Father McKenzie wiping the dirt from his hands as he walks from the grave. No one was saved. All the lonely people, Where do they all come from? All the lonely people, Where do they all belong?

Well, you can imagine the reaction! Mrs. S was down there in the front pew, furiously scribbling notes to send to the Sanhedrin! The kids in church, on the other hand, loved it! They were listening more closely than they’d ever listened to anything in church before! My goodness, how many kids started coming to church while Pastor G was there! But even more importantly, you could even see some tears streaming down the cheeks of many grown ups in church that day.

A woman who’d lost her husband a few months ago.  A family that had just sent a son off to Vietnam. Lonely people.

That song/sermon spoke like the Word of God into the hearts of the lonely.

What is this? A NEW teaching?

“God knows about my loneliness and cares for me?”

“We together as a church can be a community that embraces lonely people?”

  Even a Beatles’ song can convey biblical Truth. Maybe even better than the bible?

WOW! A NEW teaching!

Now in the case of today’s lesson, the NEW teaching of Jesus is even more radically different. As Jesus teaches in the synagogue, this demon-possessed man starts crying out. Now most experienced preachers are not too put off with disruptions in the middle of a sermon. People cough. Folks get up and go to the bathroom. Kids cry – like the little boy who was misbehaving in church and his angry dad picked him up and carried him down the aisle under his arm and as they went out the back door the little boy cried out, “Pray for me! Pray for me!”

These are things that happen all the time in church, and we get used to them.

Screaming demons, on the other hand….

“WHAT DO YOU WANT WITH US, JESUS OF NAZARETH? HAVE YOU COME TO DESTROY US?”

Jesus stops. Then he speaks to the demon, “Be quiet! Come out of him!” And the demon-possessed man begins to shake, and the demon comes out of him with a shriek! For the first time in a long time, the man is well and in his right mind.

And this is when the people say, “What is this? A new teaching – and with authority! He even gives orders to evil spirits and they obey him!”

And news about Jesus spread quickly throughout the region.

Bible scholars remind us that the Gospelwriters frequently portrayed Jesus as an exorcist. All the Gospels except John contain many such stories of Jesus casting demons from people. The stories are all very similar, beginning with the demon’s recognition of Jesus as God’s representative and one who has power over them, then comes the command to leave the possessed person, then the loud and sometimes violent departure of the demon, and finally, the amazement of those who witnessed the event. This is a pattern that runs through almost all the exorcism stories. So the exorcism itself is not the point of the story in Mark 1.

What is the point??

Well, this exorcism takes place in the context of Jesus’ teaching. And Jesus’ teaching here is contrasted with that of the teachers of the law. And then the most important thing of all. Jesus’ teaching takes place in the synagogue – in church, if you will!

And it is there – in the church – that Jesus confronts the power of EVIL!

One of our preachers at Stetson University’s Pastors School a few years ago said in a sermon that the devil loves to go to church!

Nobody ever understood this better than Jesus. Religion can very easily become evil and destructive.

I enjoy telling you stories, from time to time, about my boyhood misadventures with my best friend, D. I hope you enjoy hearing them as much as I enjoy telling them! Now some of you ask if there really was such a person as D, and the answer is “yes”, D was – and is – a real person. Others ask if the stories I tell about D and I are true, and the answer is also “yes” – more or less! D and I truly did form a very, very strong bond of friendship as we explored life together – especially sin, which we enjoyed very much.

But while I’ve told you what brought D and me together, I don’t think I’ve ever shared with you what eventually caused us to drift apart.

It was religion.

During my sophomore year in college I had a very dramatic, life-changing conversion experience. Part of it included a clear sense of calling to Christian ministry, and I immediately immersed myself in the Bible and theology and the art of saving others. I could quote scripture to you without pause – chapter and verse. I developed every argument about why you weren’t saved, and why you’d better be. In just a few short months, my newfound faith had pretty much cured me of being anything close to a human being. But I was one hell of a Christian. And then I went home for the holidays.

D and I sat out on the front steps of my parents’ home. I gave him the whole Gospel of my conversion, and my call to the ministry. When D heard that, he laughed hysterically. “You? A minister? Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!” Then he told me he was going to follow me around and tell people what I’m REALLY like. That’s why I tell all these stories about D and me. I’m just trying to preempt him from doing it.

So D laughed. But it was a sort of nervous laughter. And as we talked through the night – me doing all the talking – he seemed to get a distant look in his eye. I think D realized that in the process of my becoming a Christian, I had somehow forgotten about what it means to be a friend. And our friendship was never quite the same afterwards.

What is it about religion that can be, on the one hand, so potentially life-giving, and on the other, so potentially destructive?

One of the couples in our church mourns the fact that they can’t have family gatherings where both their children and their families show up. One of the families has gotten fundamentalist religion, and now family gatherings are not so much family gatherings as they are ecclesiastical councils – inquisitions into who believes the right things and who believes the wrong things, who’s saved and who’s not. The family has been torn apart – by religion.

Critics of religion will tell you that religion is the number one cause of war in our world, the number one cause of poverty in our world, the number one cause of racism in our world, the number one cause of oppression in our world. They tell us that we Christians especially are smug, self-absorbed, judgmental, anti-intellectual, and most especially unloving.

I find myself wanting to object to those characterizations, but before I do, I think I have to go back to that day long ago in the synagogue in Capernaum where Jesus was teaching.

How is it that a man ravaged by a demonic illness could be there in the synagogue and nobody helps him? Exorcisms were not uncommon in the day and there were many people who practiced the art. But here was a man suffering greatly with no one to help – IN THE CHURCH!

Could it be that the worshippers that day were like worshippers in our day – so concerned about their own worship experience that they didn’t even notice the sick man sitting among them?

Or could it be that they took the position that the demon possession was merely the result of the man’s own sin, and now he was receiving his just reward – sort of like what some Christians said about the victims of AIDS? That’s one way many religious people turn a blind eye to those who suffer.

How could it be that a man could come to church for help, and not get any?

Perhaps they were too busy practicing religion.

But Jesus noticed. Jesus was moved. And Jesus helped. That day the man went home – alive and well!

That’s the kind of religion God wants us to have – a religion that gives life to people and helps them become well, and makes the world a better place – a religion that truly practices “love your neighbor as yourself” as the ultimate expression of our love for God.

I know that sounds too simple to many people. We want to talk more about how to read the Bible – what theory of atonement is true – whether or not we are worshipping according to biblical rules – how to have a nice up close and personal relationship with Jesus – how to find the spiritual keys to personal success – how to get ourselves and others to heaven – how to make our country a “Christian” nation.

Jesus never talked about any of those things.

He just said, “Love God, and love your neighbor.”

That one commandment sums up everything else!

And then he went out to the towns and villages – and even to church – and practiced what he preached.

He loved people.

“What is this? A NEW teaching?”

In the dangerous world of religion, it sure is! And for some – like old Mrs. S – it’s a teaching to be rejected.

But for others – like the demon-possessed man and all the Eleanor Rigby’s of our world – it is the saving Word of God.