The following sermon was preached by Rev. Brian Dixon on February 1, 2009 for Dolores Street Baptist Church

Readings for the Day:  Mark 1:21-28 and an excerpt from The Year of Living Biblically by A.J. Jacobs

What makes you sad?  (Give people time to think and then respond.)  What gives you joy!  (Give people time to think and then respond.)  What amazes you?  (Give people time to think and then respond.)  One of the temptations of this text is to vilify either the law or even worse the entire Jewish race.  To say that they were too focused on the law and were thus unable to see Jesus right there in their midst.  To say we should be less like the Pharisees.  But at best this clouds our eyes to an important point and at worst this makes us anti-Semitic.  The thing we forget or miss when we do that is that everyone there including Jesus was following the law.  They were observing the Sabbath and doing what a good Jewish faithful would do.  They were attending synagogue.  That is what got them there. 

The first reading today was from a book called The Year of Living Biblically.  The author set out on a journey of trying to live by all the Biblical laws.  Here is a person who identifies as an atheist--well that is how he identifies at the beginning of the experiment.  (I haven't gotten to the end of the book yet, so I don’t know how it turns out.)  But essentially he starts working through the Bible and looking for all the laws in it.  And he comes up with a pretty big list.  Each day he tries to focus on one particular law.  He quickly learns that this is not the easiest way to live.  And honestly people begin to view him as a little crazy.  But what he also finds is just what we read today, that when followed the laws often lead you into some profoundly faithful places.  This little law about eating only things that are grown from trees that are at least five years old invites him to pay attention and to notice what he is eating, to be present.  In other places he talks about praying and how in the beginning he is pretty uncomfortable with the whole idea.  But as his journey continues he becomes more comfortable and it actually again invites him to a place of gratitude, gratitude for the people in his life, and he doesn’t just talk about food but gratitude for all that is involved and all who are involved in bringing food to his table.  He begins to notice how rituals give him a new way to mark time, a new way to settle in and a new way to notice the world around him. 

This is what is happening, in theory, on this day we read about in Mark.  The people have gathered like any other Sabbath to participate in a ritual that they had practiced since they were born.  A ritual that their ancestors had practiced.  To be honest it was probably becoming old hat.  For some of them perhaps they just came because their parents had come before them and their parents' parents before them.  They came because it was the thing to do.  Regardless of the ways they were living every other day, whether they were obeying the other laws or not, this is what they did on the Sabbath.  It reminds me of when I was in college and the girls who would not go to church on Sunday morning but before they would come to the cafeteria for lunch they would put on all their makeup and do their hair as if they had just gone back to their room in between church  and lunch to change. Because going to church is what people did on Sunday morning whether you wanted to or not.  I was a church geek so I really didn't have to be dragged to church on Sunday morning but others my age did.  And I'd imagine that on this Sabbath young adolescent Jews were being pulled by their ears to attend Synagogue.  And perhaps more than a few adults came reluctantly as well. 

Reluctant probably because nothing all that interesting ever really happened at temple.  They would read the same words, the same old words that they had read way too many times before.  And they would sing the same songs or hear the cantor sing the same old tired songs that didn’t really mean all that much to them anymore.  It wasn't the music that they were hearing out in the marketplace.  They weren't creating play lists of their favorite Sabbath music.  And then after they sang the same songs that they had heard and sung too many times, the rabbi would stand up and start speaking.  Start speaking at them about things that seemed very cold and unemotional.  They would sit there and listen to something that they had probably heard way to many times already.  And while the rabbi was teaching they would be wondering when it was going to be over so that they could get on with their day.  They were probably getting hungry and wanted to get to their Sabbath meal that was waiting at home.  Hopefully, the chicken wouldn't get cold before they got there.  They were certainly not looking to be amazed. 

Then this new guy stood up and began to speak, to speak like no one had ever spoken before.  When the rabbi spoke it was as if an expert was speaking about something he had learned when he was in seminary or rabbinical school.  But this man was speaking with an authority that was unlike the rabbi's.  It didn't come from diplomas on the wall. And it wasn't even so much what he was saying as how he was saying it.  In American Idol lingo he had whatever that X factor is that Simon Cowell is always talking about.  It came from what could only be described as first hand knowledge.  He wasn't just talking about God he was talking as God.  But I'm not sure that had time to set in before all hell broke loose.

A man stood up and started screaming.  And before we go any farther, this is what I want to know.  Was this the first time this man showed up or had be been there before?  Was he, like Jesus, a visitor to the synagogue, or was he a regular part of the community?  Had they simply grown accustomed to this man?  We always want to believe that the one who is out of touch with Divine, the one who's soul is clouded by darkness, is somewhere out there.  And we never think that he or she could be right here.  Perhaps the one who needs the most healing is not out there on the street but right here among us.  But we have grown complacent towards that too.  

Regardless, the man who needed healing on this particular day was right there.  He stood up and started shouting.  Wanting to know if Jesus had come to destroy them.  Destroy the demons that were living inside this man.  Interestingly enough it seems that the only ones who recognized Jesus as Jesus were the demons, no one else in the room did.  And to them Jesus said, "Be silent, and come out of him!"  Then the demons started convulsing and came out of him. 

When the people who were witnessing this picked their jaws up off the floor they all began remarking how amazed they were at this.   Even though there was convulsing and such this does not really seem to be the focus of their amazement.  Mark spends very little time focusing on the actual exorcism.   This would not be the making of a Hollywood movie plot, well maybe one of those indy films where they just sit around talking about what happens instead of anything actually happening.  In this telling no heads seem to spin, no split pea soup is projectile vomited.  Instead the demons leave.  What really seems to amaze the people is the authority with which this man speaks.  Again it is not the authority of someone who has second hand knowledge of the divine but someone who is intimately connected to God. 

Mark wants us to know that this is not just someone talking about God, this is someone who is God.  The word immediately is used three times in the short little passage that was read today.  Not in the translation that was used today where immediately is often replaced with “just then” or “at once,” but the idea is there.  Mark wants the reader to know that Jesus wasn't coming, God wasn't coming, God was there.  Not in the future, but right now. 

How do we come here?  How do we come to worship?  Do we come because this is what we do?  Because this is what we have always done?  Do we come expecting to be amazed?   Do we come expecting to come in contact with the divine? Do we come expecting to be so changed that we will leave here differently than we have come?  Do we expect people to be healed?  I'm not talking about physical healing, I'm talking about something that no medicine could touch, I'm talking about spiritual healing.  A healing of the soul, a filling of a wound that only the divine could fill.  Really do we ever come expecting to be amazed or on the opposite side do we ever leave having been amazed.  The author Annie Dillard wrote, “On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside of the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return.” (Annie Dillard in Teaching a Stone to Talk )  Now I don’t necessarily agree that God is going to wake up and take offense.  I think God is already awake and waiting for us to take notice.  To be amazed. Because God is seeking to do amazing things.  And perhaps God is already doing amazing things, but we have gotten too cold and complacent.  Epiphany is about waking up, from the sleep and the cold and taking notice.  About tasting the cherry and seeing the healing that is going on around us.  So wake up and be amazed.  Amen.