Inner Demons

Epiphany 4 Sermon

• Audio Transcript

  [00:00:00] All right, well, good morning. And, um, I'll have to name it right off the bat. We have some challenging scripture to engage this morning, on a day when the rest of the world is either playing golf or getting ready for football. Well, here we are on Epiphany 4. And we will talk about some, sometimes, to some people, scary concepts that are very unfamiliar to us.

  
  Those of you who are journeying with Mark in the forum after the 9: 30 service, and those of you who are following Mother Paige's suggestion that you should read the whole book of Mark straight through, will already have some of this information. So what was going on at the time of our Gospel of Mark?[00:01:00]

  
  What was going on? What was going on in the years between 60 and 65 when scholars think the Gospel of Mark was written? If the date of the writing is correct, then Mark's Gospel coincides with the first major persecution of Christians in Rome. The Emperor Nero singled out the Christians in Rome for serious persecution, and that began a trend for the whole empire.

  
  Persecution during the rule of Diocletian. As one writer has said so well, Imagine if you can, that you were a Christian in Rome in 63. You have a Jewish heritage. [00:02:00] You're already part of the Jewish diaspora. So you're not living at home. Imagine being there in the synagogue and hearing this text. You don't know about your religious identity at this point, or really who you are.

  
  You believe in Jesus. But yet, you've come from a different background. Imagine being there, in the synagogue, and hearing this text that we have in our gospel. Two of your anxieties are squarely faced. The question of your religious identity, and your fear of death for your beliefs.
  Many scholars claim that [00:03:00] Jesus claimed his authority directly.

  And this was different. This was different. From a rabbinical teaching. When sometimes several rabbinical scholars gave comments, and then the teachers gave their view. But what did Jesus do? This is the different part. The exciting part. Jesus says today this text is fulfilled in your presence. He didn't rely on teaching tradition. He was it.

  
  He was something more than a teacher. He was a healer. He was a healer. He was part of the Godhead after all and sent to exist as both human and divine. To walk with all of us in the challenges and the [00:04:00] troubles we face. And to guide us toward making decisions that are of God. Jesus, in the end, is love.

  
  Jesus is love. And sometimes, tough love. Tough love. And that's the way I think it was with the man with the unclean spirit. Confronted immediately, as Mark tells it, Jesus saw him for who he was, and what he was, and he rebuked him. And, his unclean spirit came out of him. He shed that unclean part of himself through the loving power of Jesus Christ.

  
  That's how it happened. That's how it happened. We can talk about authority, we can [00:05:00] talk about power, but when we're talking about Jesus Christ, in the end, the power comes from love. This is tough stuff. But should we need it, Jesus loving power to heal whatever the problem or trouble we have is available to us.

  
  What might that look like in our private faith lives? In our own individual human story? I've heard conversations like, um, Well, I have my own demons. Have you ever heard that? I have my own demons. I live with them. I try to do something about them. I made a little survey of some people in our own congregation.

  
  I'm not going to quote them by name. I asked them, you know, if you said I have a demon in [00:06:00] my thought or something like that, what, what would that mean to you? And this is what they said. You're not good enough. You shouldn't have done that. You should be ashamed of yourself. You, how can you live with yourself?

  
  On and on with those kinds of comments to yourself inside. I talked to somebody else in our congregation and this is what I heard. In our thoughts, the demon which leads to a broken spirit, are thoughts that hinder our personal growth, spiritual growth. Christ wants us to stop shooting ourselves. Christ wants us to be whole.

  
  Christ, [00:07:00] Jesus Christ, wants us to live in his love.

  
  So what's an unclean spirit? That's the other word. We need to talk about that. We'll hear from one of your wise people in your own congregation. An unclean spirit is when someone, or we, say or do something to someone else that will negatively impact their personal or spiritual growth.

  
  I want to, uh, kind of expand the word to broken spirit. Because I know that a sort of a list of those actions, either received or given, can lead to a broken [00:08:00] spirit.

  
  So, we're not there in the sequence of Mark's gospel, but you will be if you go to the forum, and I urge you to. Or if you read Mark all the way through. But we know that if we face negative thoughts or actions and repent, we will, because of the faith we have, we'll be forgiven. We'll be forgiven because what we'll find out about Jesus later in the book.

  
  And his most wonderful act of love on the cross. So whenever and whenever we come to those troubled times, when we know that we need to repent, that forgiveness will be there. It will be there. And we also know that Jesus, the loving person, [00:09:00] will be with us always, always, always by our sides, keeping us wrapped in love.
  Amen.