Take our minds and think through them.
Take our lips and speak through them.
Take our souls, and set them on fire. Amen.
“Jesus and his disciples went to Capernaum; and when the sabbath came, he entered the synagogue…in the synagogue a man with an unclean spirit cried out, “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us?”
After calling his first disciples, Jesus is made manifest to the people through the words he says at the synagogue but more importantly, through his interaction with a man with an unclean spirit.
“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.”
This first story in the Gospel of Mark of Jesus is a story of healing. And it is a story as relevant today as it was back then.
Think about the unclean spirits of today that infect our humanity…
· how addiction overwhelms individuals and families;
· how racism has changed over time from explicit to implicit forms but continues to thrive;
· how fear & anger consumes us; how envy & greed devours us;
· how divisions divide us; and we are enslaved to being right (and our side winning)
· how sexism helped created a culture of degradation, where women & girls were harassed and abused and not believed.
We don’t think of addiction or racism or sexual abuse as demons but they are most certainly demonic. They are death dealing and not life giving. They often resist our best attempts to overcome them. And as we make those attempts, the experience can feel like wrestling with a beast.
We as a church are called to follow Jesus into such wilderness, into the dark parts of our society and our world, to bring light and healing and hope, to wrestle w/ the demonic, to set people free.
We are called to rebuke and help transform people and our society away from the death dealing demonic. But if we are to do this, then we must practice our faith outside the bounds of this beautiful place.
A recent survey of Episcopalians, found that although “many attend Sunday services, some don’t feel personally responsible for practicing faith outside of worship.” Ouch! This reminds me of the cartoon that I posted on Facebook on Friday. A husband leans over to his wife at church and says, “As if Sunday isn’t enough, he now wants us to introduce religion into our everyday life.”
Exactly. It is Jesus who calls us to practice our faith outside of Sunday morning, just as called his disciples to leave their occupations and follow him. If we truly want to follow Jesus, love people and change the world, then we need to live out our baptismal faith, 24/7 & 365. Our faith is not just for Sunday mornings and it is meant to be fully lived. How do we do this? Through prayer & study, worship & service.
Prayer is the life blood of a Christian. As Episcopalians, we have a great gift to use, the Book of Common Prayer to aid us in this. But by no means is this the only way to pray. Rosaries and singing are two other ways that people pray. And there are so many more… (I have a handout on ten ways to pray, if interested).
Study puts flesh on our faith. Biblical Study both what we do in bible study here at church and what we can do at home (or really anywhere these days with technology and books) and also study of the saints who have gone before us and lived faithful lives, all of this informs our faith. There are so many Christian classics that we can read too.
Worship, to offer our wonder and awe and thanksgiving to our creator, doesn’t just happen on Sundays but for many of us, Sunday is our worship day. A day as an old prayer puts it - in God’s holy House. Help us to keep our thoughts on you, that we may hear you speaking in our hearts… Worship is a time when we focus on our relationship with the one who created each of us & still speaks to our hearts if we listen.
Service is what we offer each other, especially those in need, the poor, the sick, those in prison. There is an expectation that as one author puts it, there is not a hole in our Gospel, for we seek to serve the world in Jesus name. It is something we do well here… from Mozambique to Russsia, from Flint to New Haven, DCF, Monroe Food Pantry, making dresses… we reach out in love.
Growing in discipleship involves prayer, study, worship and service. Our call to discipleship as the body of Christ in this place, St. Peter’s Church – 216 years old, is to work on becoming the Beloved Community for Monroe, a place where God’s love welcomes all, where strangers become friends.
This idea of the Beloved Community, brought to our consciousness through the words of Martin Luther King Jr., and is currently a focus in our Episcopal Church - The Beloved Community is the body within which we promote the fruits of the spirit and grow to recognize our kinship as people who love God and love the image of God that we find in our neighbors, in ourselves, and in creation. It provides a positive, theologically and biblically based ideal toward which we can grow in love. Love to God, Love to our neighbors as we love ourselves. Our discipleship is connected to our living this out in a Beloved Community for everyone to find here in this place.
We have our work cut out for us, to tackle the demonic (poverty, etc.) we need to be able to fund what we want to do & to have people engaged in such ministries, to bring light, hope & love.
But first, I think we need to listen…
There is a story told about a charitable foundation that began work years ago among the mountain people of Nepal. Their focus was on supporting women and girls. But their first project was an epiphany for the organizers.
Their team was touring a small village in Nepal. They were impressed by a long concrete staircase leading up the mountain to a village perched on a ridge. The steps certainly made it easier to navigate the steep path. But they couldn't help but notice the well-worn track in the dirt alongside the steps. When they reached the top, they asked the villagers about the path. Their inquiry was met with a chorus of nervous giggles.
The villagers explained that, a year before, a visitor had a great deal of difficulty trekking up the hill to the village, sliding on the slippery path. The well-to-do and well-meaning traveler was concerned about the women carrying heavy jars of water on their heads. He vowed to do something to help them, so he arranged for the construction of the steps. After the steps were completed, he made a great display of "presenting the steps" to the village, and then he returned to his home.
The women tried to use the steps but suffered many injuries as they lost their balance and fell with their water jars. They were used to feeling their way up the dirt path in their bare feet, not having to look down and risk spilling the water they were carrying. So they bypassed the steps and created a new path along side the concrete.
What would have been a better solution? the team asked. The villagers laughed. "If he had built a well at the top of the hill, the women wouldn't have to carry the water up the hill at all!"
It was an object lesson for the foundation team. They realized that they couldn’t impose their programs from the top down. Any new projects would begin by listening to those they were trying to help. As a Nepalese woman who would become involved in one of the foundation's future projects would later remind them, "We're poor, not stupid." [From "Don't help them" by Rebecca Ordish, The Optimist, March/April 2014.]
The people who encountered Jesus saw in him a very different kind of authority, an authentic authority centered in empathy, compassion and respect. Jesus' authority inspires rather than enforces; he sees his call to lead others as a trust, as a responsibility to serve others by revealing the God who calls us to compassion and mercy for the sake of the kingdom of God. May we seek to possess the authority of the Gospel: to listen to others with the compassion of the heart, to stand with (not above) those in need, to join our hands with those who are struggling up mountain paths balancing their own water jars. (Like Lauren J. did on her mission trip!)
It all begins with you and I here, in this sacred place. There are "unclean spirits" all around us - and within us - that can be cast out by an offering of kindness and generosity or silenced by a word of forgiveness and mercy.
In the spirit of Jesus, the Good News is found in the compassionate reconciliation and humble justice that Jesus offers. We need to listen to each other so we can cast out the unclean spirits of anger, fear and hurt that isolate us, that mire us in fear and selfishness, that blind us to the love of God in our midst.
To cast out the demonic is not easy in ourselves or in our world but if we are to be faithful in our discipleship and become that Beloved Community, a place where any and everyone can come & find love – then we must listen and love our God, our neighbors & ourselves without exception.
Let me end this address with a short mediation on love.
I want you to get comfortable in our chair, close your eyes, relax, and listen…
Howard Thurman – Thou Shalt Love (p. 46 – Meditations of the Heart)(open your eyes) Amen.
THOU shalt love thy God. There must be for me a deep sense of relatedness to God. This relatedness is the way by which there shall open for me more and more springs of energy and power, which will enable me to thread life’s mysteries with life’s clue. It is this, and this alone, that will make it possible for me to stand anything that life can or may do to me. I shall not waste any effort in trying to reduce God to my particular logic. Here in the quietness, I shall give myself in love to God.
Thou shalt love thy neighbor. How I must seek ever the maintenance of the kind of relatedness to others that will feed the springs of kindness and sympathy in me! I shall study how I may be tender without being soft; gracious without being ingratiating; kind without being sentimental; and understanding without being judgmental. Here in the quietness, I shall give myself in love to my neighbors.
Thou shalt love Thyself. I must learn to love myself with detachment. I must have no attitude toward myself that contributes to my own delinquency. I shall study how so to love myself that, in my attitude toward myself, I shall be pleasing to God and face with confidence what He requires of me. Here in the quietness, I give myself over to the kind of self-regard that would make me whole and clean in my own sight and in the sight of God.
Thou shalt love
Thy God
Thy neighbor
Thyself
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