Can you imagine it? There the people were, sitting in the middle of synagogue, trying to keep their children quiet, handing over the cheerios, the trucks, the paper, the pens, the mints, whatever it took to make him quiet during synagogue. And they were spellbound, nodding with approval at what he had to say. All of the sudden, this guy appears out of thin air and this awful voice comes out of him, and it tells the truth of who Jesus was, beating the crowd and the disciples to the punch, “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.”
The confession of the unclean spirit: “I know who you are…” And the first act of Jesus’ public ministry in Mark’s gospel is an exorcism. “Shut up, and come out of him.” We clean it up a bit when we read, “Be quiet.” The term is a bit stronger than that. Older translations read, “Be muzzled,” and translated in to present-day parlance, we find Jesus not mincing words. It’s a little easier to relate to the miracles like making lots of wine at the wedding at Cana, feeding the 5,000, healing the sick, raising the dead, you know, the normal everyday stuff of ministry. The demons and the readers are the only people who get this insight. Sure, Jesus teaches with authority, unlike the scribes, and commands the unclean spirits and they obey, and the people are amazed. That seems to be the extent of it. It is bothersome that the demon gets it right. Even Peter, the Rock, doesn’t make his famous confession, “You are the Messiah, the Son of God,” for seven more chapters. The unclean spirits aren’t the ones who are supposed to get it right. All of these good people, sitting in synagogue, dressed in their Friday best, and, sure, they’re amazed… but didn’t they hear what the unclean spirit said? Other than Mark’s introduction to the Gospel, this is the first time we have heard these words… and they’re coming from a source that seems so offensive, so unlikely… It’s the voice of the shadows, the voice of evil lurking, the voice of Sin, telling the truth about who Jesus is.
“You are the Holy One of God.”
This is the first time, other than the introduction of Mark, that someone makes such a proclamation, and it doesn’t come from the disciples, or the crowds, and or the religious leadership of that day. This unlikely preacher marches right up in to the middle of the people, during the middle of worship, and proclaims the Good News. “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, you are the Holy One of God.” Good news? It doesn’t really seem like good news. Good news is that God loves us and that Jesus died for our sin. Good news is that the light shines in the darkness and the darkness cannot overcome it. Good news is, “Your sins are forgiven, take up your mat and walk.” Good news is the news that comes into the darkness and tells the truth about who we are, and the truth about who God is.
The truth about us is that we’re better observers than we are participants, having more in common with the amazement of the crowds than the confession of the unclean spirit. Sitting in our Sunday best, we hope our Saturday worst isn’t showing. We try to stuff smiles into the holes made by our brokenness. This unclean spirit has more courage than we do, coming up into the middle of synagogue and preaching the sermon that nobody wants to hear: we cannot hide our brokenness, and we cannot run far enough or fast enough to escape the reality of our sin. We want Jesus to save us, but we do not want to admit we need to be saved.
So we distance ourselves from this scene, backing away slowly, telling ourselves it is only a story, or telling ourselves we know so much more about mental illness today that we could certainly figure out a solution for this person’s problem. Mental illness and psychological and neurological disorders with medicine and psychopathology. Demon possession is a simplistic understanding of the way the mind works. We are now more sophisticated, more smart, and have more technology to guide us through these issues. Though there may not be anyone throwing themselves into the center of church saying, “What have you to do with us, Christians?” it’s not so far removed from us as we would like to think.
It seeps into our culture when we’re looking the other way. How many people in our world, in our nation, in our state, and in our church are possessed by something in which they are not in control? How many are afflicted by being possessed by pornography? By alcohol? By drugs? How may people are possessed with their own possessions? Money? Power? Influence? What have you to do with us, people of God? It is into this world that the Good News comes. It is here our darkness marches right up to Jesus in the middle of church and says, “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, you are the Holy One of God.”
The question of destruction isn’t just a question of the one unclean spirit - it is the question of all of us who encounter this light, this Word, this Christ. And Jesus preaches into our darkness, silencing the voice of destruction. Shut up, and come out of him. Shut up and come out of her. Shut up and come out of us. On the other side of this command, on the other side of the death self, the death of sin, and the death of death, is life. We live out of this reality, becoming unlikely preachers ourselves.
Unlikely preachers, indeed. Like Abraham and Sarah, we laugh in disbelief when we hear God’s promises. Like the Israelites, we turn from God so that we can worship idols of gold. Like Jeremiah, we try to silence the voice of God within us because we’d rather be popular. Like the rich young ruler, we would rather buy or earn our salvation than depend on grace. Like Peter, we say, “I swear to you, I do not know the man.” God preaches through even these.
So we come, trying to hide our true selves, only to find that our true selves are the very ones Jesus draws out. Your Saturday worst is showing. Exposed and vulnerable, wanting to run, we start to sweat, fearing that we will be thrown out, that we will be destroyed. What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? It is at this place, at the place of our brokenness, of our darkness, that we find Jesus has everything to do with us. Jesus has to do with our hope and with our salvation.
This is the basis of our confession. Our confession is that our sin makes it impossible to see anything but the destruction that is in our wake. Our confession is that we would rather be amazed than believe. Our confession is that our Sunday best can’t hide our Saturday worst. Our confession is that we hold nothing in our hands to bring to God. Right in the middle of church, in front of God and everybody, we confess that we have sinned.
What would it look like if we were that honest, that real, that vulnerable toward each other, toward ourselves, and toward God? What if we dared to tell the truth about who we are? Daring to tell the truth about who we are, we proclaim the truth of who Christ is.
It is when we realize we have nothing to stand on that we depend, truly depend, on Christ. It is when we realize our righteousness does not help us stand before God that we realize Christ is our entire righteousness. It is here that Christ and his promises ring the most true. This is good news, that Jesus Christ is for us. Inasmuch as it is good news for us, it is not good news for the spirits that bind us, for it is the news that evil does not have the final say. It is the news that sin does not prevail. It is the news that death has been conquered.
The Good News comes, from the least likely of sources. Even the unclean spirits proclaim the truth of the Gospel. For them, it is an end. For us, it is the beginning of new life. This proclamation makes us all preachers, wherever we are: it rings through our lives, telling the truth of who we are and the truth of who Christ is. It is a sermon, it is our confession, it is our statement of faith. I know who I am: I am an unclean spirit, fearing my own destruction. I know who you are: You are the Holy One of God, the one who gives life. And so, knowing we have nothing else upon which we can depend, we throw ourselves upon Christ’s mercy. As Martin Luther said to Philip Melanchthon before he went before the Diet of Augsburg to defend their faith, “If you are a preacher of grace, then preach a true and not a fictitious grace; if grace is true, you must bear a true and not a fictitious sin. God does not save people who are only fictitious sinners. Be a sinner and sin boldly but believe and rejoice in Christ even more boldly, for he is victorious over sin, death, and the world. As long as we are here in this world we cannot help but sin. This life is not the dwelling place of righteousness but, as Peter says we look for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells. It is enough that by the riches of God’s glory we have come to know the Lamb that takes away the sin of the world. No sin will separate us from the Lamb, even though we commit fornication and murder a thousand times a day. Do you think that the purchase price that was paid for the redemption of our sins by so great a Lamb is too small? Pray boldly—you too are a mighty sinner.” [23] Thanks be to God. Amen.
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