Theme: Unclean spirit to Holy Spirit - a miraculous change
Deuteronomy 18:15-20 - God promises to raise up a mighty prophet for the people.
Revelation 12:1-5a - The Revelation myth of supernatural birth. .
Mark 1:21-28 - Jesus cures "unclean spirits".
They went to Capernaum; and when the Sabbath came, he entered the synagogue and taught. [22] They were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes. [23] Just then there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit, [24] and he cried out, "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." [25] But Jesus rebuked him, saying, "Be silent, and come out of him!" [26] And the unclean spirit, convulsing him and crying with a loud voice, came out of him. [27] They were all amazed, and they kept on asking one another, "What is this? A new teaching--with authority! He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him." [28] At once his fame began to spread throughout the surrounding region of Galilee.
A couple of weeks or so ago Ludovik Kennedy started an article in The Times with the following words: "Churches in England, we read in The Times, are 'bleeding to death'. A great deal of ink has been spent analyzing the Church's wounds, self-inflicted or not. But why do we bother trying to keep it alive when we know that God is dead?"
He headed the article, "Goodbye God, we can get along just fine without you." It seems the article was based on a book written by Ludovik Kennedy, entitled "All in the Mind: A Farewell to God", published by Sceptre books.
One of Kennedy's problems with the concept of God is the idea of miracles. Like many in our generation, he is unable to believe that Jesus was born of a virgin, or walked on the water, or raised Lazarus to life, or changed water into wine.
He admitted that many Christian scholars accept that these claims need not necessarily be taken literally, but may rather be pointing to be eternal truths, but he simply dismissed that answer almost without discussion.
Our gospel reading today was about a miracle, a miracle of healing. What are we to make of it? Did miracles ever happen? And if they did, can they still happen today?
In the very beginning, in those early legends in Genesis which tell us in story form about the creation of the world, God speaks and things happen. God said, "Let there be light!" And there was light. God said, "Let the earth bring forth living creatures," and animals were created. God said, "Let us make man in our own image," and human beings arrived on earth.
Many Christians these days would accept that as a mythological representation, rather than a historical account which was literally true. It's saying in story form that God is the creator, the energy behind the universe, however that universe might have come into being.
Mark begins his account of Jesus' ministry in a similar way. He has Jesus speak and things are restored to the way they ought to be, to the way they were when first created by God. Jesus said to the man who was deeply troubled by an unclean spirit, "Come out of him!" And the man was restored to his right mind and his right soul.
So immediately it begins to become clear that Mark has a vested interest in the way he writes his gospel. By choosing this particular miraculous healing as the very first act which Jesus does in his ministry, Mark hints that Jesus is equal with God. In the beginning, God speaks, something amazing happens. In the beginning of part II, Jesus' ministry, Jesus speaks, something amazing happens.
Mark is the only gospel writer who begins the ministry of Jesus in this way. John has Jesus beginning his ministry by changing water into wine at the wedding in Cana in Galilee, a rather different sort of miracle.
In Matthew's gospel, Jesus' ministry begins with a short general paragraph about teaching, healing, and preaching, but the first act which is detailed in any way is the Sermon on the Mount.
And Luke begins the ministry of Jesus by having Jesus read from Isaiah's scroll in the synagogue in Nazareth, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind and to set at liberty those who are oppressed." And then Jesus goes on to tell the listening crowds that the words he's just read apply to him.
Each gospel writer has his own agenda and his own target audience, and therefore his own slant on the events and life of Jesus, and his own way of getting his particular message across.
So what else is Mark saying in this story of the healing of the man with the unclean spirit? We no longer know precisely what was meant by the term, "unclean spirit". It may have been the same as "evil spirit" since both terms seem to be used interchangeably throughout the gospels. And most scholars believe both terms referred to various types of mental or emotional illnesses.
Sometimes the unclean spirit seems to be associated with a convulsive illness, such as epilepsy. But in this instance in Mark's gospel, although the healing was accompanied by a convulsion, "unclean spirit" seems to refer much more to what we might class nowadays as bad behavior.
The man was shouting and yelling and making a thorough nuisance of himself. I can just picture him with a can of lager outside the nightclubs in Ibiza, or with a gang of friends attacking the windows of the church with stones, or beating someone up in the streets of London just because that person's skin happens to be black.
On this occasion the young man was actually in the church, in the synagogue, yelling and swearing at Jesus. Jesus could have reacted by ignoring the man, trying to pretend he wasn't there and hoping he would go away. Or he could have called the churchwardens and the sidesmen and had the man thrown out of the synagogue, or even arrested.
But Jesus loves even the lager louts, and so he faced the man, told him to be quiet and commanded the unclean spirit to leave him. And it did - to the astonishment of everybody watching. The man instantly changed from being a perfect nuisance to becoming a perfectly social human being.
The change is the difference between being possessed by an unclean spirit and being possessed by the Holy Spirit, the spirit of Jesus, the spirit of God. And so Mark is also hinting that when people become aware of the Holy Spirit inside them, the God within, their lives change.
It takes an encounter with Jesus face to face, for me to recognize that my human spirit is inevitably unclean, but that God's Holy Spirit within me can replace that unclean spirit of my own.
We have many unclean spirits in our modern, western way of life. There's the unclean spirit of appalling behavior, with no thought or concern for anybody else. The sort of behavior that damages property and wounds or injures other people, but also the sort of behavior which fails to value workers and treats them as though they're of no consequence.
There's the unclean spirit of wealth, which regards money as the highest god to be worshipped, and which regards any devious act as justified if it leads to more money.
There's the unclean spirit of pornography, which is invading all our lives through television, where that which should be sacred is made profane.
And perhaps as a result of all this, there's the unclean spirit of depression and stress, which is rife amongst so many of our people.
But miracles do still happen today, and things can change if the people of God want them to change. The unclean spirit of our society could be changed into the holy spirit of our society, and we could become a holy people.
And we're not as few or as marginalized as the media love to tell us we are, for Ludovik Kennedy's article was followed by no less than eight letters of protest to The Times next day.
I'm happy to tell you that God is not dead, but alive and well and active, and that miracles still happen. But if we want those miracles, if we want things to change, then it's up to us to spread that message, because no one, not even Ludovik Kennedy, will discover the God within until they encounter him.
But once that happens, unclean spirits disappear and are replaced by the Holy Spirit of God himself, and we experience the miracle of resurrection, of new life.
And that's a miracle worth shouting from the rooftops.
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