4 Epiphany
January 29, 2012
1 Corinthians 8: 1-13
Mark 1: 21-28
I. Introduction: "It's hard to dance with the devil on your back"--Shake it Off?
• In the world of new music, I've had some recent encounters with Florence + The Machine. I breezed past the group on television last night on Austin City Limits. I appropriated a copy of their most recent album from my son Dylan's digital cache over the Christmas break. One song on their new album has been sticking with me, as songs sometimes do--waiting, I suppose, until their time is ripe. This one begins, "regrets collect like old friends, here to relive your darkest moments/ I can see no way/ and all of the ghouls come out to play." The refrain is insistent: "It's hard to dance with the devil on your back. So shake it off. " If a tune could only do the trick--and this one aims to--that would be great, but, alas, it's not always so simple to "get the devil off your back."
• I read recently an account by a presbyterian minister of a holiday season "drop in" visit to the church office by a young man (not a member) who asked to see a minister. Expecting to see someone down on his luck and asking for a handout, the minister was surprised to see a clean, neat, well-dressed, dignified young man whose only request was a blessing. "Sorry to take up your time," he said, "but I just want your blessing." He explained, articulately, that he had this "devil on his back" that he could not shake, as much as he tried. He thought that if he could find a minister who would "bless him" him, the devil would go away. Not the usual Presbyterian line of work--but the minister said a prayer with this young man, asking God to take away this "devil" that was preventing him from being the kind of person God intended him to be. The young man went his way, leaving the minister to wonder what became of him.
• The "devil on his back" could have been so many things, all of them familiar to us--addiction, depression, anxiety, unhealthy relationships, guilt, regret, anger, fear. "Shaking off" any of these things can be, at best, I think, only a temporary fix. What we know, deeply, as that young man knew, is that we need a "healing word" from one more powerful than ourselves. We need the change of heart, mind, and body that comes only from experiencing the love of the living God.
II. Gospel: Jesus' Healing Word
• Today in our gospel lesson, Jesus encounters a man with an "unclean spirit" in
the synagogue in Capernaum. The spirit clearly knows Jesus and his power, saying, "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." Jesus' healing word in this case is a "rebuke": "Be silent, and come out of him!"
• As the witnesses that day in the synagogue understood, this was a genuine exorcism, the casting out of an unclean spirit. If you look in the Book of Occasional Services of the Episcopal Church under the heading of "exorcism,"
you will find a brief paragraph that says, basically, "don't try this at home or on your own." And, indeed, for most of us, the services of an exorcist will never be necessary.
• But for all of us, the "healing word" that carries God's love and power IS necessary to free us from the tyranny of our own particular "devil." How do we encounter it?
III. Epistle: "Love builds up"
• If we turn in our lessons today to Paul's letter to the Corinthians, we will find
some instruction about how. Responding to an early Christian community seeking to live as followers of Christ in a diverse and complex culture, Paul advises them not to rely on their knowledge--of law, of teaching, of the "right way." Rather, he tells them, they are to rely on love: "Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. Anyone who claims to know something does not yet have the necessary knowledge; but anyone who loves God is known by him."
• In addressing the "culture" questions of the early church, Paul's answer is to look to Jesus Christ, who did not teach us to build fortresses to protect Christian community, but who was instead himself a bridge to those who were outside, outcast, or challenged by the rule of law.
• Christ's healing word is available to us through the love of God we know in our Christian family here together, in the hope and renewal that we experience
together. And, we are called to share this, to build a bridge between ourselves and the world.
IV. Conclusion: The Bridge of Compassion
• We build that bridge with compassion. We build that bridge through building
relationships in which we employ imagination and insight to feel with others,
seeing and loving others as God's own and valuable to God.
• In last Sunday's New York Times, Nicholas Kristof told the story of Olly Neal and his teacher Mildred Grady. Neal was a student in a small Arkansas school for black children in the segregated South. Mrs. Grady was his English teacher. Olly Neal was tough and mean, an incorrigible shoplifter who seemed headed for a life of trouble. He was so mean that he reduced Mrs. Grady to tears on more than one occasion, and she was used to ill treatment. One day, during lunch period, Mrs. Grady was working in the library when she saw Olly Neal steal a book, a Frank Yerby novel with a racy picture on the front. Her impulse was to confront him, but before she could she had a flash of understanding--of compassion--in which she realized his embarrassment at being seen checking out a book. And so, she did something extraordinary. She drove to Memphis, sought out another Yerby novel, and bought it with her own money. She left it where the other book had been. Olly Neal had secretly read the first book in his room, loved it, and brought it back--so he could "steal" another on. This pattern was repeated three times.
"Reading got to be a thing I liked," Neal said. His trajectory changed: he read all he could; he went to college, and then to law school. He became a prosecuting attorney, then a judge, and is now an appellate court judge. All because Mildred Grady acted compassionately and built a bridge in hopes of reaching "a rude adolescent who made her cry." Olly Neal was freed from the "devil on his back" that was poverty, oppression, and anger. He didn't "shake it off." Someone offered a "healing word" that built a bridge away from that devil.
• If we are seeking the healing word, we will find it. We will find it because there are others among us who have received that healing word of love themselves-- and who act to share it.
• Our calling, as the Christ Church Cathedral family, is experience and give thanks for the love of God that we have known, the healing word that we have received-- and then to be compassionate and to respond to the needs of those around us with a healing word. AMEN
Sermon
The Fourth Sunday of Epiphany
January 29, 2012
The Rev. Canon Beverly Gibson
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