29 January 2006
Carolyn L Roberts

Mark 1.29-39

The freeway exit we usually took to our home in California led us past the Veteran's Hospital of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest fame. It was not uncommon to see men who had left the grounds to buy a package of cigarettes from the corner mom and pop store making their way ever so carefully back to the confines of the hospital grounds. I usually drove more cautiously within those few blocks. I was never sure that the veteran's reality was my reality. At one point, a long-time friend came to the Bay Area. She was having her own problems with reality, and spent some time in intensive therapy in a residential mental institution. When Adele visited us for a weekend, I shared with her my question. Should I trust that the veterans and I were seeing the same street, sidewalks, and street lights? She said no, that I was right to assume that even those basic realities might be different.

In today's scripture, multiple realities collide. The first is the political reality within which Jesus begins his ministry. John the baptizer has just been arrested-and Jesus is John's disciple. Once the leader is pulled out of a movement, the disciples have two choices-to pack up and return home, or to continue the work and risk the same outcome. So the political reality that outspoken Jews who attract a following end up on the wrong side of the law is hardly lost on Jesus. But Jesus doesn't miss a beat. As soon as John is arrested, Jesus proclaims that the waiting is over. Any thought that God may be waiting for a more opportune time to act is gone. As any good organizer would say, "The leader you are looking for is you." What Jesus says is, "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is upon you." In other words, the time is now, in the present. It's a spiritual moment. Then he gathers followers of his own.

The second reality is religious, and it takes two forms. The first we have already heard. The realm of God is as much a present reality as the realm of Caesar. The gospel lays it on the line: to which realm do we give our allegiance? That's on the macro scale.

But we all know that faith is personal as well as corporate, individual as well as communal. Today's scripture addresses the personal aspect of faith within its communal and political expression. It begins with Jesus teaching in the synagogue. And he connects. It's not that the scribes are bad. Its more that the scribes teach the tools of scripture, helping people to learn what scripture says. Jesus speaks the heart of scripture, enfleshing what it means.

And along comes the third reality, the point at which an "unclean spirit"-those voices of personal history or culture or any other power that claims authority in our lives-those voices challenge what it means to live in the nowness of God's realm. "What have you to do with us?" Isn't that always the question of power when it is challenged?! "What business do you have here with us, Jesus? Nazarene! I know what you're up to! You're the Holy One of God, and you've come to destroy us!"

The long-running cartoon Doonesbury speaks to unclean spirits that invade individual minds. In the character of B.D., the gung-ho recruit for the Viet Nam war, peacetime football coach, and disabled veteran of the Iraq war, the unclean spirits of war and fear and depression and rage all find their home in his troubled soul. Two weeks ago in Boyds, St. Marks United Methodist Church confronted the unclean spirit of racism. That mute swastika on the church doors screams its challenge: What business do you have here with us, Jesus? Make no mistake. In the name of Jesus, that community of faith is out to destroy that insidious parasite.

A month earlier, hundreds of religious leaders-including John Thomas, President and General Minister of the United Church of Christ-gathered on the steps of House office buildings to challenge the unclean spirit of greed, codified in the House's proposed budget. Last week, John Deckenback and other religious leaders held a press conference in Annapolis to confront the unclean spirit of homophobia and bear witness that people of faith can and do support marriage equality. In this same week, an eight-year-old child brought a handgun to the daycare and shot another student. We can only guess at the voices which are raging within his small frame. But each of these voices is present among us. Each of these demons finds its voice in our culture. Each of us carry within us the voices of unclean spirits that challenge the authority of Jesus' teachings. Through the mirror of our scriptures, we are reminded that those voices try to find a hearing within our faith communities.

But my friends, we have it on good authority: the Word takes form and dwells among us. That Word demands that the crippling, alienating, distorting voices be silent. They do not give up without a fight. But when, as that wonderful spiritual has it, we keep our "mind stayed on Jesus," we meet God in the now, and a new reality, the reality of the realm of God takes form among us. And no matter how hard to unclean spirits try, they can't stop it. What good news!