WORDS AND DEEDS
Mark 1:21-28
January 29, 2012

            As always, it’s a privilege to be preaching here again in Eugene.  What’s more, I can honestly say that I would much rather be here than in the suburbs of Chicago with Pastor Steve.  I don’t do well in arctic weather.

            When he invited me to preach, Steve asked if I would continue the series that he’s begun on the Gospel According to Mark.  And so our text today is the text that Steve would have used.  We are still in the first chapter of the gospel, where Mark is trying to give his readers a quick, descriptive backdrop to the ministry of Jesus.  He does this by giving us a series of ‘benchmark’ events in rapid succession.  The gospel opens, if you remember, with the ministry of John the Baptist, who serves as a link between the prophetic Old Testament world and the new one that has dawned with Jesus.  Then Mark follows quickly with Jesus’ temptation and the calling of his first disciples. 

However, in today’s text we suddenly find ourselves with Jesus in the town of Capernaum, on the northern edge of the Sea of Galilee, where Peter and his brother Andrew, as well as the brothers James and John, all lived.  It was a large town by Galilean standards and prosperous, so it made sense for Jesus to make it the headquarters for most of his ministry.  And so our text opens in verse 21:

(Verse 21) They went to Capernaum, and when the Sabbath came, Jesus went into the synagogue and began to teach.

            My wife and I visited Capernaum last May and were amazed at the extensive archeological digging that is going on there.  They have unearthed large portions of the actual town that existed in the first century, including the main synagogue.  As we walked through the synagogue, it was as if time suddenly collapsed and you could almost see the local Jews gathering in that space, and the notorious young rabbi, who was creating such a fuss all over Galilee, standing up to speak. 

            Luke’s gospel tells us that attending the local synagogue on the Sabbath was Jesus’ habit wherever he happened to be.  And because he was already quite famous, he was often asked to preach.  And such was the case on this particular day.  And whenever Jesus taught, the reaction of the crowd was always the same, as our text in Mark captures so well:

(Verse 22) The people were amazed at his teaching, because he taught them as one who had authority, not as the teachers of the law.

            In the first century (and even today), it was customary for a rabbi to base his sermons on the existing teaching of prior rabbis, who themselves had been taught by others.  In fact the whole Jewish Talmud is one vast compendium of precisely this kind of teaching.  There is a passage in the Talmud from a Rabbi Eliezer that captures this attitude well: ‘…nor have I ever in my life said a thing which I did not hear from my teachers.’

Now we need to be careful that we don’t fault this method of teaching unfairly.  They maintained this attitude because they had a great distrust of novelty for its own sake and a great respect for ‘that which had been received.’  They did not feel that the task of theology is to pontificate or speculate or be inventive.  Jews took their religious teaching seriously, and so teachers were very cautious in how they articulated their positions.  And I should quickly add that this same cautiousness is shared by most sound Christian theologians.  And because, for us, our principal source of authority is scripture itself, we take seriously the warning of the apostle Paul, when he said: ‘Do not go beyond that which is written.’ 

But Jesus was different.  Consequently, he taught differently.  He taught as someone who had access to the truth that the rest of us do not have.  He rarely quotes from other rabbis or from well known traditions.  Unless he was quoting directly from scripture, his usual formula was, ‘I say to you…’  Often he would even underscore the force of his words by saying, ‘Amen, amen, I say to you…’ which is usually translated, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you…’  The word amen comes from a root word in Hebrew for truth.  By doing this, Jesus was trying to convey that what he had to say wasn’t merely his personal opinion or a debatable point.  It was Truth with a capital ‘T.’

Such teaching, however, because it was untraditional, not only amazed, but it also  created suspicion.  He taught as if he had a hotline to God, which could easily be seen as presumptuous and even blasphemous.  All of which meant the amazement of this crowd could easily have turned ugly had it not been for what happened at the same time:

(Verse 23) Just then a man in their synagogue who was possessed by an evil spirit cried out, ‘What do you want with us, Jesus of Nazareth?  Have you come to destroy us?  I know who you are—the Holy One of God!’

            This man must have been a regular member of the synagogue, since his reaction to Jesus makes it doubtful he would have intentionally come just to hear him speak.  This also suggests that this man’s condition may have been easy to hide until he actually came into proximity with Jesus, which in turn may explain why demon possession is seldom mentioned in scripture either before or after Jesus’ appearance.  It was a phenomenon that seemed to have been exposed primarily by Jesus’ personal presence. 

            In other words, the power of evil in people’s lives had been there all along, but when the presence of God suddenly appeared in the person of Christ, it sometimes provoked this kind of dramatic reaction.   The forces of evil that are arrayed against God are real and personal.  But they are so woven into the very fabric of our world that they do not always stand out.  It takes the radical light of Christ to make them visible.  All four gospels are very clear about the fact that Jesus provoked wildly different reactions wherever he went.  Some people were deeply attracted to him, while others rejected him in the most violent of ways.

            And so the language of this demonic spirit shouldn’t surprise us.  Evil cannot survive in the presence of God’s light, and so this evil spirit knows his grip on this man is coming to an end.  But in the process the spirit also exposes Jesus’ true identity by calling him the ‘Holy One of God.’  This is precisely the kind of witness Jesus neither needs nor wants, and so he intervenes quickly:

(Verse 25) ‘Be quiet!’ said Jesus sternly.  ‘Come out of him!’

In the Greek, the phrase ‘Be quiet!’ is literally ‘Be muzzled!’   Jesus is putting a gag on this evil spirit.  But why did he silence him when the spirit was actually witnessing to Jesus’ divine origin?  It was because such a witness would only feed into hands of Jesus’ enemies.  In the twelfth chapter of Matthew’s gospel, the Pharisees accused Jesus of casting out demons by the power of demons themselves.  They were willing to recognize the very obvious fact that Jesus possessed great power, but they claimed it was an evil power and not from God.

Jesus understood only too well that truth can never benefit from the support of evil.  It must authenticate itself through the power of God.  Unfortunately, Christians have not always remembered this.  Prior to WWII, many German Christians were becoming alarmed by the secularism and moral decline that they saw in their country.  Some blamed it on the atheistic outlook of the Communist Party that was growing within Germany at the time.  Consequently many sincere Christians thought it would be best to join forces with a newly emerging party—the Nazis—who professed a desire to turn the country back to traditional values.   Unfortunately, by the time many of these same Christians woke up to what the Nazis were really all about, it was too late.

            If something is true, it doesn’t need something evil to shore it up.  All truth, in the final analysis, is self-authenticating.  It simply needs to be stated and then lived out.  Jesus could have made some pious observation to the crowd in the synagogue about how terrible it must be for this man’s whole life to be so controlled by evil.  That would have been ‘true,’ in the technical sense, but certainly open to debate.  This is what we might call ‘truth without deeds.’  Instead Jesus commands the demon to come out, thereby making not some abstract point but demonstrating that his truth also comes in power.  Which explains what happened next:

(Verse 26) The evil spirit shook the man violently and came out of him with a shriek.

This appears to have been a common phenomenon when Jesus drove out demons.  They would leave, but only reluctantly and with great struggle.  Evil’s grasp on us is intense and so ingrained into the whole fabric of our being that its elimination can only be completed with struggle.  I have heard the testimony of alcoholics who became Christians and instantly lost all desire to drink—a painless and instant healing.  And while I always assume their story is true, I also know that the underlying cause of their addiction is probably still there and that dealing with that underlying cause will be a much more difficult battle. 

All of us struggle with evil attitudes, habits, and self-centered perspectives that hound our every step and cripple our ability to follow God wholeheartedly.  Only as we allow the word of Christ to come into us by the power of his Holy Spirit do we begin to experience his deliverance.  And this can be painful.  But those of us who have put our trust in Jesus, the power of evil has been broken and we have been set free.  It may take us our whole life to really understand and grow into this reality, but it’s true nonetheless.  As the apostle Paul put it so well, ‘Greater his he who is in us, than he who is in the world.’

And so there you have it—Jesus preached and then he acted.  And now how does the crowd respond?

(Verse 27) 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 evil spirits and they obey him.’

            This is the second time in this passage we are told that this crowd was amazed.  First they had been amazed at this teaching, and now they were amazed at his healing.  This is important, because one without the other could easily have distorted Christ’s mission.  Had Jesus simply gone around healing people but never taught them who he was or what his mission was, then the whole point of his ministry could have been easily misunderstood.  But the opposite is true too.  Any fool can stand up and claim to have a word from God.  Indeed, history is full of such people, and they have led many naïve souls into dark places.  Words alone would never have been enough; Jesus needed to demonstrate the power of God in a way that would corroborate his words. 

            And so over time Jesus became famous as one who was mighty in both word and deed.  Think of those two men on the road to Emmaus when they encountered the resurrected Jesus but did not recognize him.  Jesus asked them what they were talking about and here is what Luke records, ‘[They replied] …about Jesus.  He was a prophet, powerful in word and deed before God and all the people.’   In the introduction to the Acts of the Apostles we read: ‘In my former book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus began to do and to teach…’ 

This is the central point that Mark is trying to make by telling today’s story at the very opening of his gospel.  In Jesus we do not have just a wise teacher.  We have someone powerful in both word and deed, someone who would not only point out the way to new life, but who enters into our very being and empowers such a new life.  Jesus had come to do battle with the very evil that had such a strangle-hold on this world.

Which also explains what we read next:

(Verse 28) News about him spread quickly over the whole region of Galilee.

Jesus has been embraced throughout history by all cultures and races and ages precisely because his words are true and his power is real.  Consequently, he cannot be contained.  Jesus rejects the witness of the demons, and in doing so he actually spreads a greater light, the kind of light that doesn’t frighten or cajole people into the kingdom of God, but draws them by the reality of his words and deeds. 

Which means that Jesus is the sole message that we have to offer the world.  And our message comes not just in words, but also in our lives.  To the extent that we incarnate Christ—to the extent that his life is growing in us—our witness to Christ will be powerful and convincing.  We do not preach an ethic or a belief system.  We do not exist to make people feel good or to provide a variety of social services.  We exist that we might present Christ to the world—the Christ who is both the wisdom of God and the power of God, the Christ who must be both heard and allowed to enter into our very lives, including how we live our lives. 

Come, Lord Jesus, and fill us with yourself.  Let us go forth in his name today. 

Amen