This week I found myself captivated by the man with the unclean spirit. Specifically, with how little detail the writer of Mark’s Gospel gives us about him. Mark’s Gospel is so brief that lack of detail is one of the hallmarks of this gospel, but still. Jesus entered the synagogue to teach when “Just then there was… a man with an unclean spirit.” The spirit cried out to Jesus, Jesus rebuked him, the spirit came out, and “They were all amazed.” And just as suddenly as he was noticed, the man was forgotten, as the Gospel writer’s attention switched back to the crowd and their astonishment over Jesus’ teaching—with authority.
The Gospel writer’s obsession with Jesus’ teaching is strange because what Jesus was teaching is never stated. We think we know, because we’ve read the other Gospels which include all sorts of teachings, but imagine for a moment you’ve only read Mark. Last week in verse fourteen we heard that Jesus came “proclaiming the good news of God.” Today “he entered the synagogue and taught… as one having authority, and not as the scribes.” But no content is every given for that teaching, no explanation of the “news” part of the “good news of God”. The focus of the story is not on the message, but on the result of the message, that Jesus’ words contained the authority to control even unclean spirits.
Which is cool, except what about the man with the unclean spirit? So focused was the writer of Mark on the power of Jesus’ word that the man ended up as a prop, rather than a character in his own story. And since we know from pretty much every other story about Jesus that Jesus did not treat people as props, I want to use what theologian John Bell calls our “scriptural imagination” and flesh out who this man was and how this encounter might have affected his life.
Verse twenty-three tells us that while Jesus was teaching in the synagogue on a Sunday, “Just then there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit.” Just then, how? Capernaum was not a large community. Even today it is a small fishing village on the northwest shore of the Sea of Galilee, back then it was no more than a small cluster of houses, around the size of the Adventist Village over on Van Buren. It’s possible this man was a wanderer, driven from village to village by the demands of the spirit. It is just as possible that he was from Capernaum, that everyone knew him. That he was like the woman who lived on the front step of my home church and insisted on calling everyone Stan, or the man who stops in to get free coffee at the Y, just a harmless bit of local color, so well-known and familiar as to be nearly invisible, part of the scenery of the community. And how did he “just then” end up in the synagogue? Had he been there all along, was he there every Saturday, and no one paid much attention to him? Or was this the first time he’d entered? Where before he had stayed out, feeling himself unwelcome, unwilling or unable to come into the crowded space, on this morning he crossed the threshold, drawn in by the presence of Jesus, by the authority of his teaching?
We don’t know, we can’t know, the answers to these questions, the background story of the man’s life. How he came to have an unclean spirit, what effect it had on him, and what brought him to the synagogue on that particular morning. What we do know is what happened next. Because suddenly, however he got there, the man cried out and was invisible no more. “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.” What is so striking about these words is this is the second confession, the second revelation, of the true and complete identity of Jesus. The first came at his baptism, when a voice from heaven declared, “You are my Son, the Beloved.” The second came not from his disciples—they won’t get even close for another seven chapters—but from the mouth of a man with an unclean spirit, “I know who you are, the Holy One of God.” Again and again in Mark, we’ll notice a pattern. It was not his disciples who fully knew who Jesus was. And it was certainly not the religious leaders, who we already see being set against Jesus in this story when he taught “not as the scribes.” The only ones who will see Jesus and know who he is, fully and completely, and what that means, will be the demons. Which if you think about it is not surprising; they had the most to lose, and the most to gain.
After this outburst, “Jesus rebuked him, saying ‘Be silent, and come out of him!’ And the unclean spirit, convulsing him and crying with a loud voice, came out of him.” And both man and spirit disappeared from the scene. There is no mention of what happened to the man after the unclean spirit departed. Did he stay in the synagogue, joining the crowd of onlookers, amazed at this “new teaching—with authority”? Did he become a follower of Jesus, part of the unnamed crowd that gathered wherever Jesus was? Did he go back home, take over his role as the husband and father he’d been before this unclean spirit drove him away? Was he happy to be free? Or was he terrified, because now that the unclean spirit was gone, he was going to have to start showing up for his own life?
When the man with an unclean spirit was a prop it was easy to dismiss him, to focus on Jesus, on the power of Jesus words to affect change on someone else. Poor, helpless unclean-spirit possessed guy, good thing Jesus came around and straightened him out. He was certainly stuck Jesus’ help, he definitely needed of Jesus’ authority. I’m so glad that Jesus fixed him. But when we start to think of the man with an unclean spirit as a man, the events of this story can become much more personal. It was easy when he was a prop, to push him aside as a victim. But when he becomes a man again, we are forced to reckon with the idea that he may be like us, that we are him.
We make the assumption that this man wanted to be rid of his unclean spirit, and no doubt that is true. It is true, but it may not be as easy and as comfortable as we might be thinking. That unclean spirit was probably familiar, and the familiar is comfortable. Thinking of this man as a man and not a prop gives us space to consider the unclean spirits that haunt our own lives. Because we all have them. Not ones that make us convulse or cry out maybe, but spirits such as greed, pride, fear, thirst for power, ignorance of oppression, or guilt by commission, just to name a few options. These unclean spirits rule our thoughts and our actions more than we may want to admit, keeping us silent to the needs of others, holding us captive to the very forces we profess to oppose. Sometimes their familiarity makes them invisible, other times we chaff at their presence, but fear what will be left in their absence. Because then, like the man, we will have to stop blaming them for our failings and start showing up in our lives and in the world.
It took tremendous courage to do what this man did. To just show up in the presence of Jesus, to bring to him our unclean spirits, knowing that Jesus will cast it out. And so the challenge this text presents to us is to resist the temptation to distance ourselves from the man, and instead to put ourselves in his place, to take a long hard look at our own lives and ask, do we have the courage to bring our unclean spirits to Jesus? Will we be brave enough to lay ourselves bare to this authority, to let Jesus cast aside all that holds us captive, no matter how familiar, how comfortable it might be, for the chance at freedom? It is a risk, dear people of God, because like the man disappeared in this story, we don’t know what will be left when our unclean spirits are gone, we don’t know where we will go, who we will be, when these controlling parts of ourselves are cut away and we are left to stand on our own.
It will take tremendous courage from us, but here is the good news. Jesus has the authority to do it. Not only does Jesus have the authority to do it, but Jesus has already done it. This “new teaching” is not so new after all, it is the story that sang over the waters of creation, that journeyed with the Israelites to exile and back again, that greeted shepherds with the birth of a baby in a manger, that was silenced for three days on a cross, only to sound all the more loudly from the hollows of an empty tomb. When we look closely, dear sisters and brothers, we will find that the things that hold us captive are not things at all; they are nothing more than our memories of things. We can be set free, because we already are, we already have been. And when you forget. When the unclean spirits of doubt or fear or hopelessness creep in and remind you of how you were, you can come to the font, you can come to the table, and you can be reminded. The definition of a sacrament is an element which contains Jesus’ word and promise. Baptism and communion are Jesus’ words made tangible, they are the physical presence of the promise of God. The reason the “good news of God” the “new teaching-with authority” in Mark’s Gospel is never heard is because it transcends hearing. The good news of God, the new teaching—with authority, is Jesus himself, the Word made flesh. So have courage, dear people of God, to lay bare all that holds you captive and step forward boldly into God’s new tomorrow. Like the man with the unclean spirit, we do not know where it will lead us. What we do know is that we are already free, so what have we got to lose? Amen.
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