On Side — Saturday Sermons from the Sidelines, Mark 1:21-28

John had worshiped in the same congregation for all of his ninety two years. He struggled to read the words of the liturgy or hymns. He couldn’t really hear the readings, prayers or sermon. Yet he never missed a Sunday of worship. During a home visit, the pastor decided to find out why.

“John,” she shouted across the kitchen table, “I know you can’t see or hear much at church.” He smiled and nodded. “I’m wondering,” she continued, “why you keep coming.”

John sat up straight in his chair. “Pastor,” he said, “I want people to remember which side I’m on.”

John understood today’s Gospel. Jesus comes to battle sin, death and the devil. It’s important to remember which side we’re on.

If you imagine Satan as a Halloween character in red tights, horns and hooves carrying a pitch fork, you’re not going to get this. There is a power deep in the fiber of the universe that wants to enslave you and me. That power energizes the forces that divide us from God, ourselves and one another. That power sucks the joy and hope out of life.

Alexander Schmemann put it well. “To renounce Satan,” he wrote, “thus is not to reject a mythological being in whose existence one does not even believe. It is to reject an entire “worldview” made up of pride and self-affirmation, of that pride which has truly taken human life from God and made it into darkness, death and hell.”

We are called to declare which side we’re on. But we can only do this because God is on our side. I don’t mean that God is on the side of a particular national or cultural or political movement or group. I mean that God is “for you.” Listen to these words from Romans eight, verse thirty-one: “What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us?” That is, if God is for us, no power can change that.

Paul finishes this paragraph with his greatest affirmation of faith: “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” This is the Good News for you today. God is for you. Nothing in all of creation has the power to change that.

Do you have moments (or hours or days) when it seems that darkness, despair and death are winning? I do. The headlines and hype of our age don’t help. Too often I choose to see the worst in the world and others and myself. I pray “Are you there, Jesus? Do you care, God?”

In God’s Word, in our worship and sacraments and in our life together as Church I get the Holy Spirit’s answer. Nothing in all of creation can separate me from God’s love in Christ Jesus my Lord. If I listen, I see light and life and hope. I pray that this is what happens for you as well.

Do I live on God’s side? This battle with Satan begins at our baptism. Baptism is an exorcism. From the earliest centuries of the Church, the baptismal liturgy has included a section called “The Renunciation.”

If the Gospel were to be recited in totality as candidates prepared for their own baptisms, then this scene and those like it throughout Mark’s account would prepare those candidates for their own exorcism during the rite that still lay ahead of them that night. In that regard, I think that perhaps the most important part of our baptismal rite is the one omitted from our current worship book and practice. That element is the “Renunciation.”

“Do you have the kind of heart that expects from [God] nothing but good, especially in distress and want,” Luther asks us in the Large Catechism, “and renounces and forsakes all that is not God?” If so, Luther asserts, “Then you have the one true God” (paragraph 28). If our hearts cling to anything else, he warns, “Then you have an idol, another god” (paragraph 29).

The Renunciation includes three questions. Do you renounce the devil and all the forces that defy God? Do you renounce the powers of this world that rebel against God? Do you renounce the ways of sin that draw you from God? Each time we respond, “I renounce them.”

I have often included the threefold Renunciation as the prelude to confessing together the Apostle’s Creed during the season of Lent. This helps worshippers to remember the historical function of Lent as final preparation for baptism and the ongoing function of Lent as remembrance of and recommitment to our own baptismal covenants. You could use this text from Mark as a way to introduce that practice and prepare people for such a liturgical addition in your own Lenten liturgies if you would choose to do so.

We don’t use that word, “renounce,” very often. To renounce means “to give up, refuse, or resign usually by formal declaration.” It means “to refuse to follow, obey, or recognize any further.” Baptism is an exorcism. Like the man in our gospel reading, we are set free from the powers of sin death and evil. And we are signed up for the ongoing battle.

In 1523, Martin Luther wrote out the first order for Christian baptism in Lutheran churches. In his instructions, Luther issues a stern warning. “It is no joke to take sides against the devil,” he declares. Baptism means that we are burdened with “a mighty and lifelong enemy.” We need, he says, the “heart and strong faith” of fellow Christians along with their earnest intercession through prayer.

We do not go into the battle alone. Jesus will go anywhere, face anyone, do anything to keep you in God’s loving heart. That’s why in the Creed we say that he “descended into Hell.” You can’t find the place where Jesus won’t go. You can’t face a foe without Jesus at your side.

We’re in this fight together, but it is still a fight. I think often of these words from First Peter, chapter four, verse twelve: “Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that is taking place among you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you.” One of Satan’s favorite tools is to convince us that he has retired from the field. Nothing is farther from the truth.

Matt Skinner notes that we have a worldview that doesn’t really accommodate shrieking demons. So, what does this text have to say to us? “At minimum,” he writes, “this passage provokes us to stop assuming that ‘the way things are’ must always equal ‘the way things have to be.’ The reign of God promises more, whether the ‘more’ can be realized now or in a far-off future.” We live in an era when the demons of racism, sexism, classism, ageism, and lots of other isms are shrieking so loud as to nearly drown out any other voices, “but since Calvary they no longer have authority.”

“Naming the demons is a way to recognize that they exist,” writes Osvaldo Vena. “We start with the big one, Unbelief: losing one’s faith in God, in life as a sacred force, and in our fellow human beings. It is the feeling that nothing can be done to solve our problems. Then,” he continues, “springing from this one, come the others in fearful company: homophobia, racism, sexism, classism, religious and ideological intolerance, violence at home and at school, poverty, militarism, terrorism, war, greed, extreme individualism, globalization, out-of-control capitalism, media-infused fear that leads to paranoia, and governmental manipulation of information. To name just a few.” Just a few — yes, we know.

For example, we can listen to the counsel of Ibram X. Kendi in How to be an Antiracist. Kendi notes that antiracism has made progress in American society. But racism has made progress too. Every time faith, hope, and love move forward, the forces of sin, death, and the devil respond. We should not be surprise by such pushback, and we should be prepared to continue the fight.

You and I know people who are struggling to find freedom, meaning, purpose and direction for their lives. This is a matter of life and death for them. Together, let us witness to them about the joy of life on Jesus’ side. God is for them, for us, for you. Amen.

Text Study for Mark 1:21-28; 4 Epiphany B 2021, part 2

In response to Jesus’ exorcism and healing, the people describe Jesus as one who preaches and teaches with “authority” (verse 22). Jesus operates on his own understanding and initiative and does not engage in the proof-texting and footnoting that would be characteristic of the scriptural teachers and experts of his day. He speaks for God among them, and they recognize the source and strength of his words and actions.

What is the nature of Jesus’ authority? It is certainly not, as Stephen Hultgren notes in his workingpreacher.org commentary, any authority underwritten by worldly power. It is, instead, the authority of the Word of God. “The only authority he had was the supreme confidence that what he did and said was God’s will and God’s truth,” Hultgren writes. “His authority lay in the sheer power of his words and in the example of his deeds. His authority lay in his living as God’s servant.” This is the only authority the Church has as well.

Hurtado describes that concern with authority as a major emphasis in Mark’s account. And he describes five dimensions to that authority: authority in his teaching, authority over demons, authority to forgive sins, authority over the temple and its administration, and authority to share his authority with his disciples, especially when it came to authority over the demons (page 26).

“The all-important issue of authority appears once again,” Malina and Rohrbaugh suggest in commenting on this text. “Persons who acted out of character with their station (honor status) at birth were cause for immediate concern in ancient Mediterranean communities. Since a craftsman’s son would not have been expected to speak in public, Jesus’ hearers are indeed amazed, perhaps even shocked. However,” they conclude, “Mark has already let the reader in on his justification for doing so by asserting Jesus’ claim to high status as the son of God” (page 181).

“The teaching and the exorcism are connected, then, since both result in amazement and acclamations about Jesus’ authority,” writes Matt Skinner. “Teaching and exorcism both have immediate effects, and both issue claims about who Jesus is. Inquiries into Jesus’ authority are inquiries into his identity.” Of course, we as readers know about his identity, but those inside the story (and those hearing it for the first time) have to wait for the final climax to be sure.

Hurtado notes that the crowds respond to Jesus’ teaching with “surprise and wonder but not with faith.” He points to several such expressions on the part of the crowd, “but in all these instances these responses are clearly meant to be seen as something less than Christian faith and true illumination about Jesus’ significance” (page 27).

Mark’s gospel makes it clear that Jesus shares the authority over demons with his disciples. He shares the power healing as well, but that discussion comes in the next scene in Mark’s drama. Here, let’s focus on the authority given to the church to name and cast out the demonic within, among and around us.

“How different from the conception of power and authority in our politics!” Hultgren wrote in 2009. “Our politicians try to manipulate us. They say one thing and do another. They use their authority for self-aggrandizement. They look for short-term gain, even if that means doing the wrong thing, rather than doing the right thing and trusting that in the long-term, history (not to mention God!) will vindicate them. Will the future be any different?”

Well, no, it hasn’t been, Professor Hultgren. Human authority seems mostly to know the way of worldly power. “Jesus’ authority and kingdom ministry invite us to imagine a different world — and to live towards it,” Hultgren concludes, and there’s obviously plenty of work left for people of faith to do.

“When the church learns again how to speak and act with the same authority,” suggests N. T. Wright, “we will find both the saving power of God unleashed once more and a similar heightened opposition from the forces of darkness” (Kindle Location 421). We can speak and act in that way, Wright notes, because we know (unlike the disciples in Mark 1) how it all turns out. “They can still shriek, but since Calvary they no longer have authority,” Wright concludes. “To believe this is the key to Christian testimony and saving action in the world that, despite its frequent panic and despair, has already been claimed by the loving authority of God in Jesus” (Kindle Location 423).

The demons will fight back, both in Mark’s gospel and in our own lives as disciples. They will appear to have the last word as Jesus shrieks out on the cross. But that is not the last word for them or for us. Nonetheless, disciples need both discipline and stamina for the demonic pushback to come. For example, we can listen to the counsel of Ibram X. Kendi in How to be an Antiracist. Kendi notes that antiracism has made progress in American society. But racism has made progress too. Every time faith, hope, and love move forward, the forces of sin, death, and the devil respond. We should not be surprise by such pushback, and we should be prepared to continue the fight.

Matt Skinner frames it well in is commentary. “Where are we still amazed by Jesus’ authority, by his teachings and deeds’ potential to upend our assumptions about what’s possible? Where can we see souls set free from destructive tendencies and powers that we thought were beyond anyone’s control?” He notes, “Preachers who bring these observations to the forefront of their sermons remind congregations that Epiphany is not just about longing for and acknowledging past manifestations of Jesus’ greatness and the gospel’s power; it’s also,” he concludes, “about discovering what deserves our amazement in our current and longed-for experiences.”

This can take us to the description of “The Prophet” in Deuteronomy 18.

References and Resources

Fredricksen, Paula. Youtube lectures at Yale Divinity School – Christian Identity, Paul’s Letters, and “Thinking with Jews.”

“GODS and the ONE GOD” — https://youtu.be/dTSR4bNlNT0

“GODS in the BLOOD” — https://youtu.be/qlO5vfOHq6U

Jones, Robert P. White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity. Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition.

Malina, Bruce, and Rohrbaugh, Richard L. Social Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels Kindle Edition.

Skinner, Matt. https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/fourth-sunday-after-epiphany-2/commentary-on-mark-121-28-3.

Tappert, Theodore G. (translator and editor). Luther: Letters of Spiritual Counsel. Philadelphia, Pa.: Westminster Press, 1960.

Vena, Osvaldo. https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/fourth-sunday-after-epiphany-2/commentary-on-mark-121-28-5.

Wright, N. T. Mark for Everyone (The New Testament for Everyone). Westminster John Knox Press. Kindle Edition.

Wright, N. T. Paul: In Fresh Perspective. Minneapolis, MN.: Fortress Press, 2005.

Text Study for 4 Epiphany B 2021: Mark 1:21-28, part 1

Malina and Rohrbaugh suggest that this reading illustrates a typical Markan literary device, what we might call “sandwiching.” Jesus teaches and the crowd reacts, but in between is the story of an exorcism. The middle of the sandwich demonstrates and deepens what comes first and last in the scene. We will experience this in greater complexity in Mark’s account when we get to the healing of the woman with the issue of blood and the raising of the daughter of Jairus.

Osvaldo Vena, in his workingpreacher.org commentary, gives a more detailed structural analysis of the text, outlining the chiastic structure of the verses. This analysis confirms that the exorcism is the center of the story and provides the anchor for our interpretation and understanding of it.

“It is significant that the first scene of Jesus’ ministry…is one in which he teaches and performs an exorcism,” writes Larry Hurtado. “Both actions are emphasized in Mark’s Gospel as characteristic aspects of Jesus’ ministry and, by placing this account in the opening of Jesus’ ministry,” he continues, “Mark shows the reader immediately a representative scene” (page 26).

Hurtado notes that this and other scenes of exorcisms show some of the content and activity of God’s reign as it comes in Jesus. This reign is an attack on the powers of evil which hold people in bondage. The reign of God, as portrayed in Mark, Hurtado writes, “is God’s power (authority) in action” (page 27).

Matt Skinner aptly describes it as a “fight scene,” the first of several in Mark’s account. “Mark wants us to know, here at the outset of Jesus’ public ministry — that Jesus’ authority will be a contested authority,” Skinner writes in his workingpreacher.org commentary. “Jesus’ presence, words, and deeds threaten other forces that claim authority over people’s lives. These other authorities have something to lose.”

We see here for the first time that even though ordinary humans tend not to recognize who Jesus is, the demons get it right away. This recognition is not a statement of faith (as in trust, allegiance, and loyalty). It is, rather, an attempt to control Jesus by outing him and naming him. “Demons cry out essentially to protect themselves against Jesus,” note Malina and Rohrbaugh, “by using formulas and techniques known from magical practice” (page 181). “Jesus’ command to the demons to be silent has to do with the fact that he does not want them to name him,” adds Vena, “since in that culture the one doing the naming had more authority than the one being named.”

“Jesus’ suppression of the demonic acclamations also shows that Jesus was not interested in mere acclamation,” Hurtado writes, “and at the same time, these acclamations help establish for the reader the validity of the claims about Jesus that are made in the opening of the book (1:1) and that are integral to the Christian faith” (page 28).

As readers and listeners, we know that the demons are right, even if the disciples are still in the dark. “The name ‘Jesus of Nazareth’ encodes social information all in the region would have understood,” write Malina and Rohrbaugh, “By going on to identify Jesus as the ‘Holy One of God,’ the demon acknowledges another status for Jesus that the crowd will soon see demonstrated” (page 181).

No human “gets” Jesus in his fullness until after the Crucifixion and Resurrection. So, the new converts who hear Mark’s account in preparation for their baptism are in the same position in the story as were the first disciples. Those who witness the exorcism are impressed with Jesus’ power. They communicate his reputation to the surrounding area, but this is not a proclamation of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

The crowds don’t spread the good news about Jesus (verse 28). Mark doesn’t use the word for “gospel” here. Instead, they spread his “fame” throughout the region. This news is, Hurtado writes, “in Mark’s view, not true faith but only notoriety. This immediately begins something of a tragic note in the story,” he concludes, “while it sets the scene for the ensuing accounts of Jesus’ further ministry” (page 28).

In that regard, I want to reflect a bit on what I think is an important historic part of our baptismal rite, one omitted from our current worship book and practice. That element is the “Renunciation.”

We maintain that element in our ELCA rite of Affirmation of Baptism, aka Confirmation. The Renunciation fulfills the ancient function of the Exorcism in the earliest baptismal rites – the casting out of demons in order to clear a space for the Holy Spirit to enter into the heart of the new believer.

In the rite of Affirmation of Baptism, each confirmand makes a threefold renunciation of “the devil and all the forces that defy God,” “the powers of this world that rebel against God,” and “the ways of sin that draw [us] from God.” In response to the question about each power, the confirmand responds, “I renounce them” (Evangelical Lutheran Worship, page 235).

I have had to explain to confirmands on a number of occasions the meaning of “renounce,” since that’s not a common part of contemporary vocabulary. I have sometimes wondered if that is also a symptom of our unwillingness to say “no” to much of anything in our lives these days – especially when it comes to the demonic forces that defy and rebel against God and distract us from our lives of discipleship.

I find that this practice can remind us all that renunciation is not a one-time event but, rather, is a daily discipline. Renunciation, moreover, is not only a rejection of the authority of sin, death, and the devil in my life but also a way to cling to the forgiveness, life, and salvation given to me in the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

In a letter to Jerome Weller, written in 1530, Luther offers this consolation and encouragement. Weller was one of Luther’s most devoted students and was beset with frequent bouts of spiritual anxiety and depression. Luther notes that the attacks of the Evil One are incessant and ongoing. He urges Weller to refrain from ruminating on the temptations and rather to despise demonically inspired thoughts. “In this sort of temptation and struggle,” Luther writes, “contempt is the best and easiest method of winning over the devil” (Tappert, page 85).

If contempt is not an effective defense, Luther continues, then Weller should try pleasant distraction. Seek out the company of some happy fellows, “drink more, joke and jest, or engage in some other form of merriment,” he urges. “We shall be overcome if we worry too much about falling into some sin” (Tappert, page 86).

This might seem at first like frivolous counsel. But the power of changing one’s focus is profound. Rumination can become a deadly downward spiral of dark thoughts. Sometimes a mental and spiritual “snap of the fingers,” an emotional splash of cold water in the face is precisely what is needed to return to a healthy frame of mind. I may not be able to engage in the company of some happy fellows during The Pandemic, but I can at least take a walk.

In the end, Luther urges Weller, depend assertively on the truth of the Gospel. Here Luther speaks, as he does in the previous passages, from his deep and long battles with his own spiritual anxiety and depression. “When the devil throws our sins up to us and declares that we deserve death and hell,” Luther writes, “we ought to speak thus: ‘I admit that I deserve death and hell. What of it? Does this mean that I shall be sentenced to eternal damnation? By no means. For I know’,” Luther concludes, “’One who suffered and made satisfaction in my behalf. His name is Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Where he is, there I shall be also’” (Tappert, pages 86-87).

We come back to the name that casts out demons and gives healing and life.