Mark 1:21-28
January 29, 2012
Today’s Gospel Lesson describes an exorcism. This is the first miracle that is recorded in Mark’s Gospel. Mark shows us that from the very beginning of His ministry, Jesus was at work driving out evil from the hearts of people.
We tend to pooh-pooh evil. We may laugh about it—remember the line from comedian Flip Wilson: “the devil made me do it!”[1] We may Hollywoodize it (I don’t think there is such a word, but you get my point) —I remember going with a bunch of my friends when I was in college to see the movie The Exorcist. The movie succeeded in scaring us—how many times have you repeated the mantra “it’s only a movie?” We may externalize it—it’s always the enemy who is evil. We may flirt with it—checking to see how close we can get to it without getting burned by it. Sometimes we glorify it, indulging in its temptations and pronouncing it very good. Just as the advertisers tempt us to indulge in a package of Milano cookies with words such as “”Entertain inspirations. Embrace decadent cravings. Reward yourself. Open… Taste… Delight.” We gaze at the glamour of evil and, like the Prodigal Son of the Gospel parable, we want to go to a far country and squander our lives in “dissolute living” (Luke 15:13). Very seldom do we run away from evil until it finally threatens to destroy us.
Have you ever seen someone you thought was evil? Evil can be hard to recognize. It usually doesn’t walk around wearing a sign written with scarlet letters that say “EVIL.” When evil come in human form, it usually looks like you and me.
In my early years as a lawyer, I occasionally received Court appointments to represent indigent criminal defendants. Without commenting on whether I believed or didn’t believe my clients’ claims of innocence, it certainly struck me that these people who were on the wrong side of the legal system looked like ordinary people. It was puzzling to listen to some of their claims that all the innocent people were in jail and all the guilty people were walking freely.
The problem of recognizing evil isn’t limited to those within the criminal justice system. There was the business executive (I’ll refer to him as Mr. X) who told me that someone else (I’ll just refer to him as Mr. Y) was a bad guy. I responded that Mr. Y doesn’t think of himself as a bad guy. Mr. X replied that in order to be really bad, you have to think that you’re good. He paused then before adding, “I guess some people think that I’m really bad too.” Mr. X may have been bad, but he also was a theologian and didn’t even know it.
The Apostle Paul summed it up well when he wrote that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23, NRS). We can deny it, dress it up and try to cover it up. But the writer of 1 John puts the mirror in front of our face and says “If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us” (1John 1:10, NRS).
When we judge people as good or bad, we look at them from the outside—what they say and what they do; what they wear, what they eat or drink, how they earn their daily bread. We look “at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart" (1 Samuel 16:7, NIV).
Jesus understood where evil dwells. One day, as He was reflecting with His disciples on the disagreement that was building with the religious leaders of the day, He told them that it was “from the heart [that] come evil intentions: murder, adultery, fornication, theft, perjury, slander” (Matthew 15:19, NJB). It was because Jesus understood the hearts of women and men that He could take the Law of Moses and raise it to an even higher standard that would reflect the intent and not just the letter of the law.
"You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, 'Do not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.' But I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment” (Matthew 5:1, NIV).
"You have heard that it was said, 'Do not commit adultery.' But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. (Matthew 5:1, NIV).
We hear these teachings and we start to squirm because they strike so close to home. We get defensive—after all, we all are human. We dismiss them as unrealistic. Not in touch with the culture of the 21st Century. But I have to wonder, was Jesus really out of touch or do we just not want to hear someone who knows us tell us how we really are.
So often we accept limit our journey of faith to an insurance policy to avoid future punishment. How close can we come to the fire without getting burned? Avoiding wrath is a good thing, but I believe that God has much more in store for us than simply avoiding the fire. God wants us to live abundantly, the way God created us. But to do that, we have to do something about the evil, the Sin that lies within us. As I tell our Confirmation students, it’s one thing to talk about sins, the wrong things that we do. It’s a far different matter when we talk about SIN, the evil that lies within the human heart. Our journey of faith it not just about not sinning; it’s about letting God deliver us from evil, cleanse the evil that lies within us, and free us so that we can live joyfully and abundantly.
Jesus taught his disciples to pray “deliver us from evil.” We say that prayer every week. I suspect that many times, we say that prayer hoping that God will deliver us from our external circumstances, from the enemies outside of us. God certainly does want us to pray for what we need, but I don’t think that this is quite what Jesus was getting at here.
Jesus recognized our vulnerabilities, our temptations. He was tempted, just as we are tempted. He looked into the very face of evil in the wilderness and overcame it. “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21, NIV). Jesus can tell us how to overcome evil because he overcame evil. Because Jesus overcame evil, we can too. We too can become the righteousness of God.
This sort of talk sounds strange to our ears, but the words are thousands of years old. “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” (2 Corinthians 5:17, NIV).
How do we get there? Some may have found the process to be painless and immediate, but that has not been my experience. The process requires us to acknowledge who we really are--to expose to ourselves and to God the places in our hearts that we would rather keep hidden away. It requires us to let God dig around in our hearts and minds and personalities. It may require some action on our part. It may require us to be willing to give up old ways of living. For some, it requires us to adopt a new system of values—giving up what used to be so important and clinging to what God calls good. For some, it may mean devising strategies to free us from addictions—whether chemical, emotional, relational. For some of us, it means confronting some difficult relationships, giving up grudges and resentments. For some of us, it means giving up control. For all of us, it requires tough choices. Do remember those concluding words from our Old Testament Lesson that the Lord spoke to Cain? “Sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must master it” (Genesis 4:7).
But we don’t master it by ourselves. We have a tool in our discipleship took kit to help us in this tough process. This tool is called confession. Self-examination. Some people may wonder why Christians who already have experienced God’s forgiveness would continue in this habit of wallowing around in guilt by confessing how bad we have been. Confession is not an exercise in feeling guilty; it is an examination to find disease, the disease of sin, of evil that still lies within the human heart. And when we find that sin, we are given a promise, that “if we confess our sins, [God] is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. (1 John 1:9, NIV).
So this morning, I invite you to join me in opening our hearts to the light of God through our Prayer of Confession, and recognize our need for clean hearts. Let us confess our sin to almighty God.
Have mercy upon us, O God, according to your loving kindness. According to the multitude of your tender mercies, blot out our transgressions. Wash us thoroughly from our iniquities, and cleanse us from our sins. For we acknowledge our transgressions, and our sin is ever before us. Create in us clean hearts, O God, and renew a right spirit within us; through Jesus Christ our Lord.
All offer prayers of confession in silence.
Hear these words of assurance.
The Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. May the almighty and merciful Lord grant us remission of all our sins, true repentance, amendment of life, and the grace and consolation of the Holy Spirit.[2]
Amen.
Tom Frost
January 29, 2012[3]
Copyright © 2012 by Thomas E. Frost. All rights reserved.
[1] “Flip Wilson on the Ed Sullivan Show.” YouTube, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SLifea3NHQ. Viewed on the internet on January 29, 2012.
[2] The Prayer of Confession and the Words of Assurance were reprinted from The United Methodist Book of Worship. Copyright © 1992 by The United Methodist Publishing House. Used by permission.
[3] Preached at Cunningham United Methodist Church in Palmyra, Virginia.
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