Mark 1:21-28
Life Changing Words
James Sledge January
28, 2018
I’ve
been delivering Sunday sermons for over twenty years now. Some people like them;
some don’t. Now and then a sermon may touch folks, and I’ll hear more comments
than usual. Now and then one touches a nerve ,and I hear more complaints than
usual. But if I ever had any illusions to the contrary, one thing I’ve learned
over these twenty plus years is that preaching has limited power actually to
change people.
Even
when I preach a sermon that folks love, it doesn’t mean that it makes a great
difference in their lives. It has its moment, then it evaporates. Other pastors
tell me much the same. We have a scant examples of a sermon making a big
difference in someone’s life.
Perhaps
it wasn’t always so. A word from the pulpit likely carried more weight and
influence long ago, had more of “Thus sayeth the Lord” quality to it. But as
individualism grew stronger and trust in institutions grew weaker, messages
from the pulpit were taken with a grain of salt. People need to be convinced.
In one church I served there was a
member who would often say to me, “I enjoyed the lecture today.” He meant it as
a compliment, but I suspect the only authority my “lecture” had was found in
how good an argument it made. It had no intrinsic authority because it came
from a pastor or was based in Scripture.
The Bible itself has suffered a similar fate.
People will accept what it says if it makes sense to them, if it seems
reasonable, but it isn’t assumed to be correct, true, or life-giving just
because it’s the Bible.
When
Jesus begins his ministry, teaching at the Capernaum synagogue, Mark’s gospel
tells of the people’s reaction. They were astounded at his teaching, for he
taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes.
Not
as the scribes… That likely doesn’t mean what many think it does. It’s not a put
down of the scribes but rather a statement about Jesus, about the inherent
power in his words. It is the same power seen just a few verses earlier when
Jesus happens upon some fishermen and says, “Follow me,” and they drop
everything and go after him.
The
term scribe is a little misleading, sounding clerical or administrative. But these
scribes are doctors of the Law, overseers of the legal system based on the law
of Moses. There is nothing comparable in our world with its secular legal
system. But in Israel’s system based on Torah, the first five books of our Old
Testament, scribes might be thought of as part judge, part seminary professor,
people of great standing, education, and esteem.
These
scribes knew their scripture. They could make sense of it and explain it as
well as the best pastor, and Mark’s gospel is not saying otherwise. It is
saying that Jesus’ teaching is something different. It is a word that can even
heal people.
Technically what happens in our gospel
is an exorcism, but if it happened today, we would say that Jesus cured a man
with serious mental illness. He does so simply by speaking. Perhaps we think of
this as something different from the teaching that Jesus had been doing
earlier, but our reading doesn’t. The people say, “What is this? A new teaching —
with authority! He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him.”
_____________________________________________________________________________
Next
to preaching, my second favorite thing about being a pastor is teaching.
Sometimes a class I’m leading goes really well. People seem to enjoy it and
learn something. At times they may even feel that their faith has deepened. But
never in my wildest dreams would I expect my teaching to cure anyone. As with
preaching, my teaching doesn’t have that sort of authority. Neither have power
to heal, to make new and transform.
Perhaps in the very best class or the
finest sermon, someone may feel a stirring deep inside. Perhaps on occasion
someone might feel moved enough to do something in response. But no one ever
got well from being in a class I taught or hearing one of my sermons. No matter
how well I might explain something or how stirring a sermon might be, that just
doesn’t happen. It didn’t happen for the scribes either, but it did for Jesus.
Many
years ago, long before I ever thought about going to seminary, I was a volunteer
in my church’s youth program. Once, while a chaperone on a ski trip, the youth
director engaged us all in a late-night discussion about faith. I don’t recall much
detail, but at some point the youth were asked whether or not they would go to
some desolate, dangerous place if they felt Jesus was calling them to go.
I
don’t think anyone said yes. They all said something like, “Probably not. I’m
getting ready for college and I’ve got big plans for my life. I’d have to tell Jesus, ‘No.’ ”
It
didn’t register then, but now I realize that these youth had never met Jesus,
never encountered him any real sense.
They knew a little about him, even knew they were supposed to do what he said,
but they didn’t know him.
I
wish I had been smart enough to have asked those youth this follow-up question.
“If you fell madly in love with someone, and that person told you they were
moving to a desolate, dangerous place, would you go with them?” I have a
feeling that at least some of those youth would have answered this question
differently.
Falling
in love has a certain power. I don’t know that it ever cured anyone of an
illness, but it certainly impacts people, changes them, causes them to do
things they would never have done before. In
love has power and authority over us. It’s true that intimate relationships
need more than in love to work over
the long haul, but without it, people
are unlikely to give themselves deeply and wholeheartedly to another.
Actually
encountering Jesus is something even bigger than in love. Mark’s gospel insists that to meet Jesus, to encounter his
teaching, is to meet the power of God, the word of God that speaks creation
into existence, that heals and makes new. No wonder it was so different from
the scribes.
Have
you met Jesus? Have you encountered his power and authority, the presence of
God he bears into the world? Or have you just heard about him from preachers or
other scribes?
I
think the popularity of spirituality, meditation, and such in our day arises,
in part, from a realization that something is missing in the institutional
church. There is lots of information, but there is not a lot of experience, not
a lot of divine presence. There are good, appropriate explanations about the
meaning of scripture, but not much in
love.
Yet
our faith insists that there can be, that there should be. By the power of the
Holy Spirit, Christ can dwell in us. We can find ourselves “in Christ” as the
Apostle Paul wrote. He said, If anyone is in Christ, there is a new
creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!
O
Christ, come to us now. Speak to us; dwell in us; heal us; make us new.
No comments:
Post a Comment