Jesus, Ultimate People Whisperer?

4 Epiphany B  January 29, 2012

Deut. 18:15-20  Ps. 111

1 Corinthians 8:1-13   Mark 1:21-28

Lectionary Link

   In the Gospel of Mark, the first act of public ministry by Jesus is when he commands an “unclean spirit” to come out of man who was at the synagogue in Capernaum.  As we attempt to evoke some meaning for us today from this text required as lectionary reading, we come with many pre-conceptions about unclean spirits, many of which are perpetuated through film and television.   Part of modern entertainment includes ghost whisperers and ghost busters and the ancient religious psychiatry of exorcism gets portrayed in extreme forms in the cinema.  One wonders if our fascination with such things is a protest against the certitude of modern science in purporting to explain everything, even while in the lives of most people, the unexplainable dynamics of the invisible interior world seems to influence what happens in our external world.

  For the purposes of a sermon we can but selectively offer some cursory reflections knowing that limitation of time requires that we exit this sermon with the relevant good news for our lives today.

  We begin like archaeologists who have collected shards of knowledge about the topic of the Gospel texts.  Such knowledge comes from many historical contexts and so we set a surface taxonomical grid into which we place the shards of knowledge.  And then we analyze and move to formation of cogent meaning.

  In one box we have unclean spirit, the unclean being particularly Judaic since Judaism had a classification system designating what was pure and impure.  This system was meant to keep them pure from “outsiders” since they had a vocation to be a “holy” or “pure” people because God is a Holy God.  States of disease were designated as impure and people who had such diseases had to be quarantined from society until they attained ritual purification.   In another box, we have the ancient Greek notion of the demon or “daimon.”  In the Greek culture such a daimon was neutral or could be used to refer to a spirit guide or even a god or demi-god.  But as a foreign concept to Judaism, the word demon became synonymous with “unclean” spirit and the Gospels seem to use, demon, unclean spirit and evil spirit in interchangeable ways.  In another box we have the knowledge of the holistic approach to the understanding of health.  Spirits were involved in being unhealthy; spirit/body causal connections were believed to exist.  Often physical disease was given spiritual causal explanation.  So healing and the expulsion of an unclean spirit were co-extensive events.  Another box on our taxonomical grid: In early Christian baptismal practice, exorcisms were normative practices as each convert from a “pagan” religion had to make sure that residue spirits of other religions were expelled before baptism.  Finally, another prominent grid of Christian knowledge is the Christian designation for one of the persons of the Godhead, the Holy Spirit.  What is more contrasting with unclean spirit than the Holy Spirit?

  Now where do we go for Gospel meanings for our lives?  When we are ill what do we do?  We look for a physician.  We want someone who has knowledge that can effect a powerful intervention over the force of our disease.  In our own experience with disease we settle for a gradual process of a return to health; rarely is the cure instantaneous.   In our lives we also know that we can have disturbed interior states.  We can feel helpless to addictive impulses that dominate and disrupt the quality of our lives.  We can also be socially stigmatized by our weakness, disability, disease or addiction.  And if any portion of society defines our existence as “impure” or “unacceptable” to full inclusion, we can feel our life is devalued because of who we are.

  What I would like for us to take from the Gospel reading today is this:  Jesus was able to reintegrate a man who was known as the one with the unclean spirit into the synagogue community.  Let us embrace the holistic health of Jesus that is also community health.  The worst sickness of all is to be alone and without the possibility of community.  We can bear all sorts of conditions in life if we can do it within a caring community.  Jesus was not a ghost whisperer, he was a people whisperer.  He was able to make the man presentable to the community and he was able to change the community’s designation of the man to be one who was included, and therefore worthy of care and support.

  Any physical or mental health condition includes the social threat of being feared or excluded by the community.  And we need to proclaim Gospel health.  We need to preach release to the captives and preach health to the quarantined.  This is the holistic Gospel health of Jesus Christ, a people whisperer who introduces us to the Holy Spirit as the higher power within us to integrate us within a community of health and be a part of a community that proclaims salvation or health to all. 

  May God lead us to the people who can whisper each of us to optimal health and may God use each of us to be people who whisper others to their optimal health, for the sake of Christ, the ultimate people whisperer.  Amen.