“Here Am I.
Send Me. Send Me.”
Mark 1:1-28
(esp. 21-28)
First
Presbyterian
The Reverend
Thomas A. Sweet
February 1,
2009
Ordination
and Installation of Elders
We
are in the Markan year of the three year lectionary cycle.
Mark is the first-to-be-written of the four gospels and also the
shortest. Every sentence, every word
counts. I do not do this very often,
but as a way of setting the scene for Mark and for our sermons this winter into
spring, I want to read a brief section of what I consider to be one of the
finest commentaries available on Mark entitled Binding
the Strong Man by Ched Myers. Writing
about chapter one that we just have read, Myers says that:
“The opening scenes of the Gospel of
Mark remind one of minimalist theater, collapsing a world of meaning into a few
concentrated images…Punctuated by divine voices offstage and human cries at
center stage, the prologue narrates the story of an invasion, throwing
existence-as-usual into sharp relief. Prophetic
muses, long silent, suddenly sing again. A
messenger is announced, and in turn heralds the advent, at long last, of one
strong enough to wrestle the world away from the death-grip of the
principalities and powers. This
leader appears on the horizon of history, and in a dramatic symbolic action
declares himself an outlaw. This
immediately provokes a challenge from the prince of the powers himself, which
takes the leader deep into the wilderness, where he disappears.”
“As the curtain falls upon act one, the
leader reappears to take the place of his fallen predecessor.
He boldly announces that the reign of God – with its dreams of justice
and love, equality and abundance, wholeness and unity – is dawning.
So begins act two, where, in a distant province, this leader begins
gathering followers (oddly, common working folk, local residents, fishermen
even), with whom he will mount his campaign to overturn the rule of the power.
In this prologue, Mark wields the scythe of apocalyptic symbolics,
clearing narrative space from among the weeds so that the seeds of a radically
new order might be pressed into the weary soil of the world.
This subversive story is what Mark entitles good
news.” (Myers,
Binding the Strong Man, p. 91)
Probably
we do not often think of ourselves as subversives and that is a bit of a problem
for, as church members and officers, that is who we are.
That is what we agree to be. That
the church has for so long been given a place of honor in our culture and now is
largely ignored suggests to me that we have allowed ourselves to be pretty well
tamed by the same world that we have been commissioned by God to change and
enlighten. The dominant social order
in which we live has promulgated a charm offensive against the church – “we shall exempt you from paying taxes on your property; we shall
accord you a favorable status in our communities; we shall invite your clergy to
pronounce ceremonial prayers at our cultural events and, in turn, the church
will do good deeds and fly our flag and adjudge our wars holy and do no more
than shrug your shoulders at an economic system that works for some but not at
all for others” – and the church, with notable exceptions, mostly has
succumbed to it.
In
today’s story, as Jesus teaches in a
What
was the response to Jesus by the worshipers in the synagogue that day?
Notice what Mark says: “Jesus
entered the synagogue and taught. They
were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having
authority, not as the scribes…(and) they were all amazed, and kept on asking
one another, ‘What is this? A new teaching
– with authority!”
Mark
does not talk too much about the content of the teaching because his overarching
purpose is to show his readers – and the readers to whom he was writing were
those who were beleaguered and bedeviled by the present demonic arrangement of
things at the hands of the social and religious powers – Mark’s purpose was
to demonstrate to his readers that Jesus was inaugurating a new age, a fresh
arrangement of things, an alternative approach to the way society is organized
and works.
How
often the church, in its domesticated state, has preached today’s passage as
if Jesus was simply curing a man of what we might today call epilepsy or a
mental illness (since we no longer speak of demons).
But this passage is no Merck Manual;
it is no medical journal. Jesus,
Mark says, is the Great Physician who
comes with a cure for what makes society sick.
Jesus is not walking the hallways of hospitals so much as he is stalking
the porticoes of politics. The
exorcism of the demon representing the scribal establishment whose authority
undergirded the dominant social order of the day was Mark’s way of telling his
readers who were suffering – the dimly burning wicks who were being
extinguished by the status quo and the bruised reeds being bent low by the
prevailing prevarications of the privileged powers – to hang in, to hold on,
to hope on because the reign of God
was about to take wing.
Theologian
Rita Nakashima Brock says that Jesus represents the emergence of a different
kind of power in the world, one that is not hierarchical or based on might or
external control, but power that is capable of restoring heart to the world. Jesus,
she says, reaches out with his own wise and compassionate heart to touch hearts
that are faintly glimmering under cries of pain and threats of death and
empowers them. Similarly, Patricia
Wilson-Kastner says that “Jesus became
flesh so as to show forth the love of God among us, a love that is not merely an
expression of good will, but the power of an energy that is the heart, core, and
cohesive force of the universe.”
Perhaps
the church has lost its authority for many people today because it has lost
heart. In the world, the kind of
power that is sought and pursued is the kind that makes us invincible and
invulnerable, the kind of power that steamrolls anyone or anything that stands
in its way. Power is synonymous with
superiority and seeks it own advantage.
But
heart power makes us pliant, flexible, tender, responsive, vulnerable,
compassionate, and graceful. Heart
power heals and hopes and brings together. Heart
power, neither sentimental nor naïve, calls to and for the deepest places and
graces in our lives. Heart power
finds its strength in love, and love never fails.
On
this day when we ordain and install elders in the church, it seems right to
think about the nature of the church’s ministry. It
seems to follow from our reading of Mark today that at the church’s core is
the call, in Christ’s name, to be rebuking, calling out, and exorcizing from
our communities the “demons” and the powers that make life hell for so many
people. If we, if the church, cannot
get excited about that, if we shrink from it, if we do not hear the gospel that
Jesus announced as good news, it might be that we have become too cozy with
today’s “establishment” and do not want to risk our comfort.
It may be that we have allowed our hearts to be stopped up or closed
down.
But,
when we are baptized into Christ, as almost all of us here have been, and when
we confirm our membership in the church, we are, in St. Paul’s memorable
words, no longer to conform to the world but to be transformed by the renewing
of our minds…by seeing, thinking, and then acting differently…by seeing,
thinking, and then acting with the mind of Christ…which is, ironically, by
taking and giving heart.
As
it was in the time of Jesus, the call continues to go out for disciples who will
live by heart in the world, for those whose love of power gives way to their
commitment to the power of love. Do
you hear the call? Do you hear the
call? Do you hear the call?
Do you hear the call to go into the world armed with the vulnerability of
love?
Then
say you this to the God who calls:
“Here
am I. Here am I.
Send me. Send me.”
Amen.
©
Copyright 2009 First Presbyterian Church