Epiphany 4 B

January 21, 2008

Mark 1: 21-28

One of the people I have most treasured knowing in my ordained life is someone I rarely saw at Sundays in the church in which I worked. She came to a healing service on Wednesdays and was one of the most profoundly faithful people I know; even now it is easy to picture her in the fourth row of the chapel adjacent to the church her family had attended for well over fifty years. When the time came she approached the altar, stood and asked for prayers, for her children and relatives, for the governor and president, for the problems of the nation. But I believe what she wanted most was to be known, to have a tie to the church and the people that gave it life. Healing for her, I believe, had to do with ties across the web of the people she knew and knew her, a sense of belonging central to how she understood herself.

It is a quality that is especially embedded in our way of thinking. We are inclined to see ourselves as self-made people, but the need to be within a circle of those we love, whose presence in our lives is as necessary to us as the air we breathe, is central to our humanity. It is when we are unwilling to bring the stranger into our circle that we are at our least human, when we forget the commitment made at our baptisms toward preserving the dignity of all we meet, that we deny what is most basic in us.

The connection between belonging and healing could not be stronger than at the beginning of Jesus' ministry. Although he is a mystery to those who surround him, including the disciples he has just called, the unclean spirits he meets make as clear a confession as we hear in Mark's entire Gospel: “I know who you are, the holy one of God!” The paradox is that, although it comes from within the holy place itself, the confession itself is from outside the community, among the unclean, those who it is easiest not to see. It is, after all, no great stretch to see the afflicted man, with us but not among us, crying out behind us as we sit, listening to this strange new teaching, “with authority.”

At issue is the way we understand the Lord and each other; those who are in positions of control, the teachers and the scribes. They are the very people who give the community its identity, are those who understand Jesus least., and are astounded by the teaching they are hearing and the miracles they are beginning to witness. Even the disciples, those who have already been called and those we will meet in the coming weeks, are clueless. It is only the outsiders, the afflicted, who understand; it is these who Jesus approaches and heals. They are brought back into the orbit of the only world they know. The 'teaching with authority” begins in this return, the offer of dignity which is our birthright as God's children.

One of the ironies of reading Mark during this Epiphany season is that Jesus is so intent upon maintaining a sense of mystery about who he is, swearing the spirits he exorcises and the those whom he heals to secrecy, that it seems at odds with this God made manifest which we are proclaiming. But maybe that is part of the design. We are forced to look hard for this “God with skin on” in the spareness of Mark's narrative, just as we are searching for it in the day-to-day flow of our lives, in things as small as the passing remark or the willingness to meet the eye of another.

If we are honest, I think we experience this “teaching with authority” all the time, especially as it is bookends the exorcism at the center of today's gospel. It is in the moment we have before we cross the street to avoid the unshaven man with the shopping cart, the way in which we stop and think before completely avoiding certain neighborhoods on the other side of the river. It is in our willingness to give our resources, our time, our selves, souls and bodies, to the hard work at New Hope or supporting an orphan a continent away. Because it is in the distrust of the stranger that we often find the unclean in ourselves and in recognizing our own hesitancy, we see the holy one of God in our midst.

In Atlanta, where I was ordained, there is a new church being built. It isn't the kind of church you would expect to see: there is no brick and mortar, no stained glass or even pews. But there are people, mostly from the area around a downtown park, people who have no home but have a worshiping community and the dignity it provides. There is a chance to get medical attention, for addiction recovery, and a place to get away from the noise for a while. At this Church of the Common Ground, they collect on Sunday afternoons around a table with pita bread and a cup of wine, music coming from a boom-box in the background, holding hands in prayer and gratitude for one another. Says Holly, the wife of pastor Bob Book, “We're engaging in relationships with folks who live on the margins. It would be easy to be overwhelmed by their needs, but this is not a ministry about doing.”

Indeed, the vision of God's kingdom that begins in Mark is not really about what we do but who we are willing to be to one another. In a world where we are defined by the circles to which we belong, it is easy to ignore those on the margins, those without the right clothes or the right background. But it is in offering all a space among us that our own healing begins.. It is then that we all have the opportunity to be amazed at the authority given to all of us, to offer a teaching to the world about our own commitment to the dignity of every human being.