When I was in seminary I went on a
study tour of the Middle East that included a stop in Capernaum. It’s now just a tourist stop, not much to see
other than a small cathedral over the house where Peter lived, where Jesus
healed Peter’s mother so that she could feed them. It's also likely the place were four men
lowered a paralytic down to Jesus through the roof. One of the ruins there is of a synagogue that
dates back to the 400’s CE that is built on top of the synagogue where Jesus often
taught. The synagogue ruins themselves
are quite unspectacular; just some remnants of walls, a stone floor, and a few
pillars. There's also an old olive mill
and press from Jesus' day. Back then
Capernaum was little more than a backwater fishing village of about 1,500
people, as seemingly insignificant as its ruins.
Yet, for me Capernaum was quite
significant, probably the most soul-touching place in all the Holy Lands for
me. I stood for quite awhile in the
ruins of that synagogue and it just really hit home with me that Jesus had
really been there and taught. Just a few
feet below me, Jesus really did what we read about here in Mark's Gospel. It was the first Saturday or Sabbath either
after or on which Jesus called Peter and Andrew and James and John. It's like calls them and they all head off
together to Synagogue. It would have
been a very under attended synagogue.
The Jews in Galilee were a bit more lax than those down around
Jerusalem. Jesus and the four show up
and then for some unknown reason the local rabbis let Jesus teach and the
people are amazed, astounded, gobsmacked, struck out of their senses at Jesus’
teaching. He taught with an authority
that the scribes, their usual teachers, just didn’t have.
Well, let’s not mistake Jesus’
authority as mere charisma and say that the rabbis were boring and irrelevant
while Jesus was enthusiastic and able to “make it practical”. The sort of thing for which so many
Christians today check their brains at the door. The Greek word for authority here is exousia
–
ex meaning “originating from” and ousia meaning “being”. So, roughly it means originating from the
very root of being. Here it means that
Jesus with his proclaiming and teaching about the arrival of the Kingdom of God
was coming from the root of a new creative act of God in and among his
people. He was teaching them that what
God had long ago promised by the voice of the prophets, God was now doing in
their midst, indeed in them.
Amazed is too weak of an adjective for
the people's reaction. Here was this
backwater under attended synagogue in a fishing village on the northwest shore
of the Sea of Galilee and the Lord God of Israel was right there at that moment
finally beginning to bring about his Kingdom through this Jesus of Nazareth. The authority that Jesus taught with was the
reality of the Kingdom of God actually coming into their very community and
into their very lives. We really do need
to be thinking on the scale of this being as big an event as creation
itself. In this backwater synagogue the
living water of New Creation was beginning to flow. The Big Bang of New Creation was happening in
that Synagogue.
Well, things got stranger in Capernaum
that day. Something the people there I’m
sure never thought would happen in their synagogue. There was a man among them, a man with an
unclean spirit, and he stands up and challenges Jesus, and says that this Jesus
of Nazareth is the Holy One of God. We're
supposed to call to mind Psalm 16 that describes a very faithful person whom
the Lord will not let die. Verse 10
reads: "For you will not abandon my soul to Sheol, or let your holy one
see corruption". The early church
believed Psalm 16 was about Jesus and that verse predicted his resurrection
uncorrupted by death. Well, the people
in that synagogue are about to find out just how powerful the nature of Jesus’
authority is. Not only is his authority
the power Creation, it is also the power to dispense with evil in its hidden,
twisted, personal form.
Well, I don’t want to freak you out
too much by talking about demons and exorcisms as if Jesus suddenly stepped
into a Hollywood horror movie. But I
think the topic needs to be addressed because it does come up when talking
about Jesus and the arrival of the Kingdom of God through him. You see, dealing with an unclean spirit is
the first thing Jesus does after calling the first four disciples. Jesus did five things specific to his Kingdom
ministry. He proclaimed its
arrival. He taught about it. He healed people. He pronounced forgiveness. He cast out demons or unclean spirits. So, as they were on his to do list, I think
the topic needs to be addressed.
Yet, it is hard to talk about “the
unclean spirits” in Western Culture because what Hollywood hasn’t
blown out of proportion our science dismisses.
Our tendency is to dismiss the “unclean spirits” that appear in the
Gospels as a mental illness or a medical condition such as epilepsy. Too make matters worse; the Bible itself is
very vague on the topics of evil, Satan, Hell, and demons. It does little more than acknowledge the
reality of them. This has made it very
easy for the Church over the years to co-opt images and legends of things evil
from the cultures it has entered and make people think those things are
biblical much the same as we have done with Christmas trees and Easter
eggs. It has also made it easy for the
Church to demonize things we don’t understand about the cultures we have
entered as we did and continue to do with the aboriginal peoples of North
America.
So, what of this unclean spirit? The writers of the Bible believed that there
was a spirit realm, a part of the creation that we do not typically see but
that is there and inhabited by personal beings and by personal I mean
relational. These beings are presences
and powers with which we can at times have relationships. The Bible speaks of them as angels, demons,
evil spirits, unclean or impure spirits, and the dead and indeed there is a
strong warning against trying to conjure up or enter into a relationship with
any of these.
Looking more specifically at the term
unclean spirit. The Greek word for
spirit is pneuma, which also means wind or breath. When we speak of humans having a spirit we
talk about not just the breath of life but also rather the breath of the
life, the life that is our relationship to God. Our spirit is that part of us by which we are
in relationship to God and to one another.
It is our relational capacity. It
is the part of us through which we reflect the image of God…all
the more reason why we should not go monkeying around with those other things
in the spirit realm. They further mar
the image of God in our midst.
This man at the synagogue had an
unclean spirit affecting him in his spirit, possessing him. Unclean is an Old Testament term meaning
impure by means of contact with death, blood, or something “unnatural” and
because of that not permitted to be in the presence of God or in contact with
others. If one was unclean, one was not
allowed contact with other people nor allowed to go into the temple until
pronounced clean by a priest and the required sacrifices made. So, this unclean spirit was a breath or a
wind of relational being so impure as to not be permitted into the presence of
God, a being that has the capacity to take a person over in his spirit and
depersonalize him as a human being by keeping him out of God’s
presence.
So, here in this under attended
synagogue in a backwater fishing village we have this New Creation event of the
Kingdom of God breaking forth by the word of Jesus of Nazareth. In the midst of the event evil comes forth
embodied in an unnamed man. Oddly, the
unclean spirit appears unable to keep itself from blurting out who Jesus
is. Incidentally, in the Gospel of Mark
only the unclean spirits know for sure exactly who Jesus is and what he's come
to do. The unclean spirit cries 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.”
Jesus tells the unclean spirit to shut up and get out of the man. Immediately, in a horrific display of screams
and contortions it leaves the man.
Here's this man, Jesus of Nazareth,
and four local buddies showing up to synagogue.
He teaches about the Kingdom of God having come. An unclean spirit possesses a man and names
Jesus as the Messiah and in a question states the obvious that the Messiah from
the LORD God of Israel had come to destroy even the unclean. Jesus tells it to leave the man and it
does. If amazed was too weak of an
adjective to describe how his teaching impacted the people there in that very
under-attended synagogue, how could we describe their reaction now? This man, Jesus of Nazareth, has the
authority even in the spirit realm, the authority to cast out the evil spirits
from which all evil and fallen powers on earth derive their twisted, abusive
power such what was used to silence, arrest, and eventually behead John the
Baptist whom everyone knew to be a prophet of the Most High God. "What is this new teaching?! With authority he commands even the unclean
spirits and they obey him!" The
word Mark uses to describe their reaction is that they are amazed almost to the
point of terror. Other exorcists have to
invoke gods and do all sorts of rituals and things. This Jesus of Nazareth has the authority to
command them gone with a word and they obey.
Per Deuteronomy 18:17, Jesus is the prophet God promised Moses he send
who would speak God’s very words.
For the past two hundred years or more
the church in North America has been little more than the agent of morality,
the Christian faith has become little more than a matter of private
belief. Jesus is a relative unknown and
he has a last name, Christ, which most people only know as a cuss word. If what happened in that under-attended
synagogue in a backwater fishing village happened here in this under-attended
church in a backwater former fishing village, it would scare the Hell out of
us. But friends, the time has come. The Kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe this gospel. The Jesus who turned Capernaum upside-down is
our Jesus and he's with us now. He gave
his life for us and defeated all of the evil powers once and for all. He lives.
His authority is what rules in us now and compels us to love each other
as he has loved us each. Repent and
believe this gospel for it is the power of God to save. Amen.
