Jesus' Authority Frees Us
Mark 1:21-28
Epiphany + 4 – January 29, 2012
Andy and I recently started watching the TV show Breaking Bad, which is about a high school teacher, Walt White, who you quickly learn is not quite making ends meet on his teacher's salary, and so he has a 2nd job working after school at the car wash. He's supposed to be the guy who takes the money and tells the car washers what to do, but more often than not, they're short-handed, and the owner sends Walt out on the line to do the menial labor. And it's on one of those days that Walt starts coughing and can't stop; he's been fighting the cough for weeks now and just hasn't made it to the doctor, but suddenly, he's coughing so much, he collapses on the pavement outside next to the car he's detailing, passes out, is raced to the doctor. And the next thing you know, he's sitting in the doctor's office, barely absorbing what the doctor is saying, the words just seem to swim by him: lung cancer. Inoperable. Only 3-4 months to live. He's hearing it, but Walt's mind is on his teenage son who is developmentally delayed, and on his pregnant wife, thinking of how they count on him, how he has nothing to leave behind to support him if he dies.
And not too long after that, he runs into a former student of his, who sells meth. His partner has been locked up, and he was the one who knew how to cook the meth – and oh, I don't think I mentioned that Walt is a chemistry teacher – and before you know it, and you can't quite believe it even as it unfolds before your eyes, Walt is offering to cook the meth if he can get a share of the profits. His brother-in-law is a DEA agent so Walt knows how much money he stands to make and with his head reeling from the cancer diagnosis, all he can think of is taking care of his family when he's gone – and in the blink of an eye, he's in over his head, caught up in murder and violence and drug-dealing. And in the meantime, he hasn't said a word to his wife. Walt can bring himself to tell her about the cancer, let alone the mess he's gotten himself into. And this is all in the first 1 or 2 episodes! Whew! But what it boils down to is that Walt is caught up in the grips of something much bigger than himself, something he can't control, all the while, trying to pretend that everything's okay, everything's normal, keeping up appearances, going to work everyday like nothing has changed... probably very much like the man in Mark's gospel this morning.
We know very little about this man, he's just described as a man with an unclean spirit. In the world of the Bible, the author of Mark may have literally thought it was a spirit, a demon, and who am I to say that it was not? There are certainly forces at work in our world, things that work to pull us away from God and the life God longs for all creation to have, forces that could easily be labeled as unclean or evil, even if we wouldn't quite go so far as to call those forces spirits or demons. But this man could be caught up in something more of us can identify with. It could be he is like Walt, caught up in something beyond his control: in the throes of some sort of addiction – drugs or gambling or pornography; snared in a struggle with mental illness – depression or schizophrenia or bi-polar disorder. Whatever it is, something has a hold on him, something he's not strong enough to conquer on his own... and here he is in the synagogue, something I never really paid attention to in this story before, but that detail strikes as being about a man who's trying to hold it all together, trying to make it look to everyone else like he is okay, like everything is all right, business as usual, and maybe no one there realizes the depth of his problem and how far gone he is.
And then, Jesus bursts in on the scene, fresh from calling his first disciples, just moments – if we were reading Mark's gospel straight through – just moments after Mark has shown us Jesus' first mini-sermon: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent and believe the good news” (v. 15). And this scene is his first public act – to come to the synagogue on the sabbath and teach, but what unfolds is the beginning of Jesus showing the world what it looks like for God's reign to come near, to break through the darkness of this world with God's own light. And so Jesus stands there teaching in the synagogue as someone who really knows what he's talking about, someone who speaks his own words, with no need to back himself up with quotes and footnotes from other rabbis who came before him, speaking from the heart about what he himself, beloved Son of God knows to be true about God and scripture and life in God's kingdom.
And the unclean spirit within the man, whatever that spirit may be or represent to us today, immediately senses the threat that Jesus is to him, to the way things are, to the power he has over the man's life. The spirit knows the danger of this one who comes speaking with his own authority about God and truth and life. The spirit knows what is at stake if the man continues to listen to Jesus and glimpses the possibility of freedom, of liberation, if he feels that glimmer of hope and promise and new life that this man Jesus offers, and so he cries out in self-protection and protest – “What have you to do with us? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are! The Holy One of God!”
We can identify with this resistance, can't we? - even if we've never been caught up like Walt or the man in the gospel with situations and burdens that enslave us. We all harbor things within ourselves that are at odds with God, that need to be cleansed, healed, transformed – and yet we resist. We push back against the healing authority that Christ offers, clinging to old patterns, old behaviors, old ways, because sometimes it's easier to live with the devil you know that to kick him out altogether. And so part of us resists, pushes away, holds back from submitting to his authority.
“But Jesus rebuked [the spirit], saying, 'Be silent, and come out of him!'”(vs. 25), and come out the spirit does. Jesus speaks, and the man is cleansed, set free – not without a struggle; Mark tells us the demon resists, convulsing the man & crying with a loud voice, but it cannot win. Out it comes, because Jesus has authority, power over the things that would keep us from God and living lives connected to God, lives that are in harmony with God. Jesus has power to cleanse us from the things that keep us from living lives of truth and honestly and humility and vulnerability and service; he has the power that will set us free, so that we can become the beloved, pleasing children of God that God says we are, who God created and calls us to be. Jesus had that authority then; he has it now. Whatever is weighing you down, whatever has you feeling trapped, caught, powerless – Jesus has authority to cast it out and make you whole again. It may not happen in an instant – I have a feeling Walt in Breaking Bad's got a long way to go before his demons are cast out, and sometimes it's a long, hard process with us too. There are struggles, and setbacks, but I believe “Jesus is still in the business of freeing us from those powers which seek to rob God's children of all God hopes and intends for us.” May he give you the courage and the hope to believe it too. May you experience the power of Jesus in your life, and may it set you free.
Amen.
