PENTECOST 2

May my words and my thoughts be acceptable to you, O Lord, my refuge and my redeemer. (Psalm 19:14)

SEASON: PENTECOST 2
PROPER: B
PLACE: St. John's Parish, Kingsville
DATE: June 25, 2000


TEXT: Mark 4:35-5:20 - The Calming of the Storm &
The Healing of the Demoniac
He said to them, “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?

ISSUE: - The passage from Mark addresses the demonic violence of the world, and the power of God in Christ to bring a unique peace and sanity. He brings a new creation. In the story people fear the violence, and at the same time seem to fear the Christ who brings peace. The power of God working in the world is awesome, but the one who has most assuredly experienced the healing becomes the missionary of hope for the world.
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The Gospel reading for today speaks of violence and rage. In the storm there is the external raging of the sea in nature, and in the demoniac there is an internal raging of the human spirit that is possessed by a significant evil. What’s more coupled with the violent rage of these incidents is the profound expression of human fear. There is both fear of the rage and violence as well as fear of the healing.
After doing some teaching in parables about the Kingdom of God, Jesus takes a boat across the Sea of Galilee with his disciples. They are leaving Jewish territory, and crossing over to Gentile territory, the Decapolis, or Ten Cities. The Sea of Galilee was well known for its sudden very violent storms caused by the surrounding terrain of mountains and wind drafts. It was a common belief as well that demonic forces lived in the seas. While Jesus and the disciples are at sea, a violent (demonic) storms occurs. Even though it was not appropriate for men to show or express fear, they succumb to fear because of the violence of the storm. Fearing that the boat will be swamped, they awaken Jesus who is asleep on a cushion in the stern of the boat. It’s a really curious picture. Here’s this raging storm that is terrify these seasoned fishermen, and Jesus is snoring. They admonish him for not caring that they are all about to drown. But Jesus saves the day. Addressing the raging storm, he says, “Peace! Be still!” And there is a dead calm. Then, Jesus admonishes his disciples, for they should be ashamed, “Why are you afraid? Have you no faith?” The disciples are amazed, implying now some fear at the power of Jesus.
Jesus and the disciples then safely reach the distant shore. It is an area of limestone caves which were used for burial vaults. Living among these tombs is the man possessed by many evil spirits. Here’s a man whose existence is as tormented with violence and rage. The Bible describes the man as demon possessed. We might say today that he was crazy, or manic depressive, or schizophrenic. But make no mistake that the man lives among the dead, he is howling and violent, cutting and bruising himself in his fits of rage. He knows great torment. He breaks his chains. Here is a torment raging crazy man.
Jesus approaches the man to effect a healing, who has bowed himself down before Jesus. Both the man and the demons recognize Jesus as the Most High God. Jesus demands the exorcism, “Come out of the man, you unclean spirit!” “What is your name?” Jesus asks. It was believed at the time that you could control what you could name. The demons have tried unsuccessfully to control Jesus, the Most High God. The man says, “My name is Legion.” This name implies that the man is possessed by many unclean spirits. It is also very likely that this is Mark’s political swipe at the Romans who were seen as an evil lot who had come in Legions to conquer Israel, and who had destroyed the Jerusalem Temple.
In any event, Jesus, casts know the name, has the power to cast out the legion of demons. The demons enter the gentile herd of swine, unclean and impure animals who plunge themselves into the sea where evil spirits belong. The people witnessing this strange event are amazed at what Jesus has done. But they are also afraid of Jesus’ power. It’s just awesome. What might that power mean to them. If it has such power for good, might it not also have other powerful implications for their lives that would be dramatically changing in a world that didn’t change much.
The story then concludes with the demoniac wanting to follow Jesus. Jesus rejects the idea that the restored man follow him personally, but that he go back to the Decapolis, the Ten Gentile Towns, and proclaim “how much the Lord has done for you, and what mercy he has show you.” And, he did so. Here is a strong indication that the ministry of Jesus was beginning to be expanded into Gentile territories.
Now what does all of this mean for us? Obviously the story expresses a much of the folklore of the period. We’re not very comfortable with the idea of demons. All of that seems somewhat unsophisticated for an age of reason and science. But what does seem to come through is that Mark and the early church saw in Jesus a hope unlike anything else the world had been able to give. In the beginning in the creation there was chaos. The Spirit of God brooding over the chaos brought forth new life. The disciples terrified in this awful storm, see though the work and presence of Jesus an uncanny calm and restoration from the violence of the sea. Jesus is saving his disciples in the storm, in much the same way that the righteous Noah was saved by the building of the Ark. Just as Moses had led his people across the Red Sea, Jesus brings his disciples to a safe shore. The stories are fulfillment stories as well, indicating how Jesus Christ can calm the wind and wave as God does in Psalm 107:29f, “He stilled the storm to a whisper and quieted the waves of the sea. Then were they glad because of the calm, and he brought them to the harbor they were bound for.” It’s an incarnational story, God has come in Jesus Christ to live with and to save his people from the powers and demonic forces of destruction. God has come to bring about a sanity and Word of Peace and Healing to a bruised, crazy harmful world.
What so vividly describes our own world in our own time is the violence and the craziness of the world. We may not want to think of the world as possessed by demons with pitch-forks, long tails, and horns, but neither can we escape the fact that there is evil spiritedness that possesses all of us at one time or another. It is sometimes a terrifying and frighening world though like the disciples we may not want to own up to that.
We live in a culture that has sometimes be referred to as the culture of death, and at the very least a culture of violence. We are enchanted by murder mysteries and a host of TV shows and movies in which people are killed off right and left. We heard just recently on the news how women in Central Park were physically and sexually abused be roaming bands of men. The Lakers won the championship in Los Angeles which sent people in the crowds out to burn, loot, and destroy public property. We’ve seen mob violence over recent years at many athletic events in the name of celebration. Doesn’t that seem to be a little crazy? We are only recently having to take a good hard look again at the death penalty, which by in large is racist and often a perversion of justice. There may be some reasonable and good scientific reasons for abortion, but abortion as simply a convenient form of birth control is a form of out right violence. It is a violent act. People often react violently in the cars, creating a new form of violence we refer to as Road Rage.
The human condition is often out of control. We are a bruised and beaten lot of people. We afflict ourselves with narcotics and drugs. Children are abused. Spousal abuse is common. We spend millions and millions of tax dollars on weapons and systems of destruction, in contrast to negotiations for peace and for health care. Terrorism has become to new war of the modern age with its poison gasses and biological weaponry. Violence is met with violence and breeds more violence. As scientific and as logical as we might think the modern world is and should be, we are still confronted with, and live in a world where rage, violence, and craziness prevails. The world is and can be a very fearful.
Mark’s gospel account of the Calming of the Storm and the Healing of the Demoniac, tells of people turning to Jesus Christ. Turning to Christ seeking and imploring peace brings about a great healing calm. The Demoniac is commissioned to go and tell how God in Christ had given him peace and healing. He is not to cling to Jesus and become a part of the institutionalization of Jesus, but to proclaim him. It was the faith of the early church that Christ Jesus brought a a calm, a peace, a new way of life, a new creation, and a new hope. But often even in the face of that new hope, the people were still afraid. Sometimes it seemed somehow less frightening to live in a violent raging world, than to change, to accept and to become immersed into a new power that was of God. Where would it lead? Would it forever stand against the forces, powers and potentates of this world? And Jesus stood before his amazed and terrified disciples and said to them, “Why are you afraid, Have you still no faith?”