Of Service To Each Other

^“Have you not known? Have you not heard? Has it not been told you from the beginning? Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth?  ²² It is he who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers; who stretches out the heavens like a curtain, and spreads them like a tent to live in;  ²³ who brings princes to naught, and makes the rulers of the earth as nothing.  ²⁴ Scarcely are they planted, scarcely sown, scarcely has their stem taken root in the earth, when he blows upon them, and they wither, and the tempest carries them off like stubble.  ²⁵ To whom then will you compare me, or who is my equal? says the Holy One.  ²⁶ Lift up your eyes on high and see: Who created these? He who brings out their host and numbers them, calling them all by name; because he is great in strength, mighty in power, not one is missing.  ²⁷ Why do you say, O Jacob, and speak, O Israel, “My way is hidden from the LORD, and my right is disregarded by my God”?  ²⁸ Have you not known? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable.  ²⁹ He gives power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless.  ³⁰ Even youths will faint and be weary, and the young will fall exhausted;  ³¹ but those who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.” – Isaiah 40:21-31

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“Praise the LORD! How good it is to sing praises to our God; for he is gracious, and a song of praise is fitting.  ² The LORD builds up Jerusalem; he gathers the outcasts of Israel.  ³ He heals the brokenhearted, and binds up their wounds.  ⁴ He determines the number of the stars; he gives to all of them their names.  ⁵ Great is our Lord, and abundant in power; his understanding is beyond measure.  ⁶ The LORD lifts up the downtrodden; he casts the wicked to the ground.  ⁷ Sing to the LORD with thanksgiving; make melody to our God on the lyre.  ⁸ He covers the heavens with clouds, prepares rain for the earth, makes grass grow on the hills.  ⁹ He gives to the animals their food, and to the young ravens when they cry.  ¹⁰ His delight is not in the strength of the horse, nor his pleasure in the speed of a runner;  ¹¹ but the LORD takes pleasure in those who fear him, in those who hope in his steadfast love.”  – Psalm 147:1-11

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^“As soon as they left the synagogue, they entered the house of Simon and Andrew, with James and John.  ³⁰ Now Simon’s mother-in-law was in bed with a fever, and they told him about her at once.  ³¹ He came and took her by the hand and lifted her up. Then the fever left her, and she began to serve them.

³² That evening, at sundown, they brought to him all who were sick or possessed with demons.  ³³ And the whole city was gathered around the door.  ³⁴ And he cured many who were sick with various diseases, and cast out many demons; and he would not permit the demons to speak, because they knew him.

³⁵ In the morning, while it was still very dark, he got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed.  ³⁶ And Simon and his companions hunted for him.  ³⁷ When they found him, they said to him, “Everyone is searching for you.”  ³⁸ He answered, “Let us go on to the neighboring towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also; for that is what I came out to do.”  ³⁹ And he went throughout Galilee, proclaiming the message in their synagogues and casting out demons.” – Mark 1:29-39

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This week, as our bulletin cover shows, we are entering into Black History Month; and today happens to be the birthday of Rosa Parks, who was born on this day in Tuskegee AL in 1913. When she refused to give up her seat on a bus to a white man, she was arrested, launching a case that eventually went all the way to the Supreme Court – who ruled that “separate is not equal” and segregation had to end.

Asked about it later, Mrs. Parks said that her decision to not get up was largely motivated by the acquittal of the murderers of Emmett Till. In the words of poet Nikki Giovanni, “it was Mrs. Rosa Parks who could not stand that death. And in not being able to stand it. She sat back down.”

Her ability to think clearly and act decisively under immense pressure changed the world we live in. May God bless her memory.

Today we are also still working our way through Epiphany: that time of year when God and our scriptures “show forth” and “make known” the Messiah, Jesus. Last week – to recap Mark’s gospel – we saw Jesus in a battle between good and evil when a man with an unclean spirit interrupted Jesus as he was teaching in the synagogue at Capernaum. And all the people in Capernaum remarked how Jesus taught with authority and not like the scribes.

In his teaching, and in his dismissal of the demon, Jesus demonstrated the reality and the power of spiritual gifts. A couple weeks ago in our Wednesday Bible study, we were talking about spiritual gifts – things like healing and speaking in tongues and prophecy. And we mentioned how it seems like in some churches these things happen all the time but in other churches (like the one I grew up in) the spiritual gifts were rarely if ever seen, and seemed a bit of a mystery. I wanted first off to assure you that the spiritual gifts are real, and in this passage we see Jesus using some of them. That is why the people sensed Jesus had ‘authority not like the scribes’ – which is a very accurate perception!

The spiritual gifts Jesus used on that day included teaching, word of knowledge, and healing. We don’t often think of teaching as a spiritual gift, because a lot of people teach… but teaching in the Spirit is very powerful and it goes deep into the listeners – that’s why the people felt that “he teaches with authority”. And word of knowledge, which is sometimes called prophecy, is being able to speak a truth that a person could not know unless God revealed it to them. When Jesus identified the man as having an evil spirit (as opposed to maybe being drunk or having a really bad day) this was a prophetic understanding – this was knowledge given by God. And then Jesus used the spiritual gift of healing to tell the evil spirit to leave. And the spirit left, and the man was healed.

The spiritual gifts all have the same goals: to give glory to God; to teach God’s people about God’s love and power; and to heal the things that are wrong in this world. And this is how we can tell real spiritual gifts from people who are trying to fake them: God’s Spirit accomplishes God’s will.

So that’s a quick summary of last week – which gives us our launching point for this week.

This week Jesus continues to minister in God’s power, making God known to God’s people.

Psalm 147 says: “Great is our Lord and abundant in power.”

And the psalm says God uses this power to “lift up the downtrodden, and cast the wicked to the ground.” The psalmist says God also uses God’s power to make clouds and rain and grass and animals and ravens (although I’m not quite so sure about Baltimore…). Above all, God does good for the people God loves.

Isaiah then talks about this in more detail.  Isaiah reminds us that rich and poor alike share the same end; that life is very short… but God gives power. Isaiah says:

“²⁸ Have you not known? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable.  ²⁹ He gives power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless.”

Some of us might remember the movie Chariots of Fire from a few years back – the story of Scottish missionary Eric Liddell who was also a champion runner in the Olympics. In that movie, Eric Liddell preached a sermon on this passage in Isaiah, and I can almost hear his Scottish accent:

“[The Lord] does not faint or grow weary… ²⁹ He gives power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless.  ³⁰ Even youths will faint and be weary, and the young will fall exhausted;  ³¹ but those who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.”

(Here’s a link to the video clip:)

Just in those few short sentences the words “faint”, “weary”, “exhausted”, “powerless” appear nine times! And how often do we find ourselves feeling that way? How often we find ourselves running in a thousand different directions, barely keeping up with everything that has to be done? But in these same verses the words “power”, “strength”, and “run” and “walk” are repeated as well. God is never tired; God is never weary – and those who wait for God “will renew their strength” – if we wait with expectation, looking in God’s direction, and trusting that God’s word is true.

Then we come to our gospel reading from Mark. This passage takes place immediately after last week’s reading. In last week’s reading, Jesus was teaching in synagogue in the morning. In this week’s reading, it’s later the same day. The worship service is now over, and Jesus – along with James and John – goes to the home of Simon Peter and Andrew, which is a short walk from the synagogue – just a few blocks away. It’s kind of like what people used to do after church back in the day: they’d say, “hey, let’s grab a bite to eat!” and then go to somebody’s house. It feels natural to do this; and rightfully so, because the Sabbath day is a day made for rest, and fellowship, and enjoying friends and family.

But as they arrive at Peter’s house, they find that Peter’s mother-in-law is in bed with a fever.  So Jesus goes to her, and “raises her up” – and heals her – not just in the sense that ‘the fever’s gone’ (which it was) but in the sense of she feels GREAT! She feels reunited with her family, and she feels healthy and strong, and she can’t wait to start serving lunch!

As the Sabbath day progresses, the mother-in-law and the disciples all eat and relax and enjoy each other’s company. And the rest of the village of Capernaum is pretty much doing the same thing – because it’s the Sabbath, and people relax on the Sabbath.

BUT! All over town, people are still talking about what Jesus did that morning. And as soon as the sun goes down – as soon as the Sabbath is over – the entire town shows up outside the front door!  (And these houses are packed really close together – I don’t know how they got that many people in that street!)  And they’ve brought with them the sick and the demon-possessed for Jesus to heal.

Side note on demon-possession: We here in the 21^st century don’t usually put much stock in devils or demons. We look at the movie The Exorcist more like entertainment than fact.

But many of our Christian brothers and sisters over in Africa see things differently. And the more I think about it, the more I think it’s because they have witnessed far more in the way of in-your-face evil than we have. They have seen, with their own eyes, the violence in Darfur, the burning of villages in South Sudan, the genocide in Rwanda, the decades-long civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo. They know that pure evil exists; and they know that sometimes people give in to it.

Whatever we may believe about the powers of darkness, I think the important thing to know is to stay away from them, as much as it’s within our power.

James 4:7 says, “Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.” The opposite is true as well: anyone who goes looking for trouble will most likely find it.

And let’s face it – even if we don’t believe in evil spirits, there are death-dealing forces in our world: addiction, racism, xenophobia, uncontrollable anger, envy, pollution of our air and water, and so many more. One scholar writes that these things “move through the world as though by a kind of cunning. They resist, sidestep, or co-opt our best attempts to overcome them. [Trying to solve these problems is] (he says, is) less like figuring out a puzzle and more like wrestling with a beast.”^[1]

But getting back to Capernaum: the whole neighborhood, it seems, has come to Jesus looking for healing, looking for deliverance from the powers of evil. And Jesus heals them all.

 The apostle Paul writes:

“In all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons . . . will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus, our Lord” (Romans 8:37-39)

Jesus has both the love and the power to take away all sickness, and to remove the forces of evil. That night, every person who came to Jesus was healed!

After everyone had been cared for, Mark tells us, Jesus slipped away. It was in the wee hours of the morning. I imagine many of the people were still sort of hanging around, kind of having an impromptu block party, but Jesus disappeared. Mark says he “went to a deserted place” – which would not have been nearby, as the area around Capernaum was fairly populated.

Why would Jesus do this? Mark doesn’t say, other than to say Jesus went away to pray. Was Jesus recharging his batteries, so to speak? Probably. Was he sharing joy with God his father – the joy of seeing people healed and set free and made whole? I’m certain of it. And Jesus was also listening to God – asking: what do we do next? Where do we go next? And Jesus was setting an example for us – because we also need to be with God in prayer, on a regular basis, to recharge and regroup and reconnect.

Some time later, Peter and the disciples realized Jesus was gone, and went looking for him. And after a good long search they found him, and they said, “Jesus, everybody’s looking for you!” – hinting that he should still be with the crowd. Their message is: “Let’s go back!” Jesus, OTOH, says, “Let’s go on!” It’s almost like a foretaste of the Mount of Transfiguration: on that day Peter said “let’s stay here and put up tents” but Jesus said, “Let’s go on!”

It’s a very human moment; because there is something in all of us that wants to put down roots, that likes to find a place to call home. And there’s nothing wrong with that – I think that’s how we’re designed. But Jesus leads in another direction. He says:

“Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.” (Matt 8:20)

As God’s people, much as we try, we will never have permanent roots in this world. For the time being we may have a sense of rootedness in our families and in our church and in our communities… but it’s only for a time. And knowing this sheds doubt on the line of reasoning that says “well this is how things have always been.” Because they actually haven’t… always been… and even if they have ‘always been’ they’re not meant to stay that way. As the old hymn says, “This world is not our home, we’re just a-passin’ through.”

Jesus says, “Let’s go on!” And we need to be ready to move on with Jesus. We need to know that staying put is not an option. In order to share God’s good news and God’s gifts with others, we need to not stay where we are.

So what can we pull together out of these passages?

First, the call to service is very clear. Jesus serves first: he teaches in the synagogue, he heals a demon-possessed man, he heals Peter’s mother-in-law. But there’s also a call to mutual service: Jesus serves the mother-in-law and then the mother-in-law serves Jesus. Serving goes back and forth, and we are all, each one of us, called to do our part.

Second, Jesus focused his teaching ministry, at least at first, in the synagogues. Mark says, “he went throughout Galilee, proclaiming the message in their synagogues and casting out demons.” The word ‘synagogue’ is a word that means “to bring together”. Just like the word ‘symphony’ means ‘to sound together’, synagogue is ‘to bring together’.

Our culture, in our world today, is badly in need of places for people to come together. A sense of community has been all but lost in our younger generations. When I ask my husband’s kids “where do you turn in times of trouble?” they can’t answer; they don’t know. Historically, the church has been the place to turn; it’s been the center of the community. Rosa Parks herself, when she had her experience on the bus, immediately turned to her church for support and fellowship; and she found it there.

We need to find ways to reawaken a sense of community. We need to find ways to be community for our world today. The fact that we have seniors meeting here in this building, and community meetings being held here – these are good things – these are a good start. How else might we be a ‘gathering place’ for our community? How else might we follow in Jesus’ footsteps to confront things that harm our people – and to bind up wounds, and to lead to faith and freedom?

May God lead us to discover answers to these questions – for the good of God’s people and to the glory of God. AMEN.

(photo of Synagogue at Capernaum)

[1] SALT

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Jesus Confronts Evil

The LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your own people; you shall heed such a prophet.  ¹⁶ This is what you requested of the LORD your God at Horeb on the day of the assembly when you said: “If I hear the voice of the LORD my God any more, or ever again see this great fire, I will die.”  ¹⁷ Then the LORD replied to me: “They are right in what they have said – Deuteronomy 18:15-20

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Praise the LORD! I will give thanks to the LORD with my whole heart, in the company of the upright, in the congregation.  ² Great are the works of the LORD, studied by all who delight in them.  ³ Full of honor and majesty is his work, and his righteousness endures forever.  ⁴ He has gained renown by his wonderful deeds; the LORD is gracious and merciful.  ⁵ He provides food for those who fear him; he is ever mindful of his covenant.  ⁶ He has shown his people the power of his works, in giving them the heritage of the nations.  ⁷ The works of his hands are faithful and just; all his precepts are trustworthy.  ⁸ They are established forever and ever, to be performed with faithfulness and uprightness.  ⁹ He sent redemption to his people; he has commanded his covenant forever. Holy and awesome is his name.  ¹⁰ The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom; all those who practice it have a good understanding. His praise endures forever. – Psalm 111:1-10

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They went to Capernaum; and when the sabbath came, he entered the synagogue and taught.  ²² They were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes.  ²³ Just then there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit,  ²⁴ and he cried out, “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God.”  ²⁵ But Jesus rebuked him, saying, “Be silent, and come out of him!”  ²⁶ And the unclean spirit, convulsing him and crying with a loud voice, came out of him.  ²⁷ They were all amazed, and they kept on asking one another, “What is this? A new teaching– with authority! He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him.”  ²⁸ At once his fame began to spread throughout the surrounding region of Galilee. – Mark 1:21-28

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Our readings today focus on a battle we’re all involved in: the battle between good and evil.

There are some people in the world who believe that ‘good’ and ‘evil’ depends on how you define them, that it’s a matter of opinion.  This is NOT what the Bible teaches. And when we get down to it, it’s not really what any of us believes. We may disagree over which things are right and wrong, but we all believe that there is such a thing as right and wrong. When we look at the world around us, we can see so many things that are wrong: over 100 million people homeless right now, displaced by war or famine; in many parts of the world it is difficult to find drinkable water, and yet in other parts of the world people are recovering from floods; in many parts of the world, rape has become a weapon of war – while in other parts of the world men are proclaiming themselves ‘appointed by God’ while they organize the deaths of millions… I could go on. There is no denying there is evil in this world.

In fact, when non-religious people are asked why they don’t believe in God, the most frequently-given answer is because there’s evil in the world and God isn’t stopping it. People say, “I can’t believe in a God who would let such things happen.”

What our scriptures tell us today is that God IS doing something about it. They also tell us God is including human beings in the work of setting things right.

Scripture tells us that evil came into the world when the first human beings were deceived into thinking they knew better than God what was right and what was wrong. From that point on we see people trying to do things their own way, committing murder and robbery and violence. But there were also people who loved God and wanted to live in a world where God’s love was the gold standard.

It’s not long before the Bible introduces us to Moses. Moses was a man who talked with God face-to-face. We all know his story: how he was saved from the Nile River by Pharoah’s daughter, and raised in the palace, but was then called by God to lead Israel out of slavery and into the Promised Land.

Now, as today’s scripture reading from Deuteronomy begins, the people of Israel are about to enter the Promised Land; but Moses won’t be going with them. It’s time now for Moses to rest – to go home and be with God, to be “gathered to his people” as it says in the scriptures.

The people of Israel were terrified at the thought of losing Moses. Forty years Moses has been leading them: two generations. Most of the people can’t remember a time when Moses wasn’t there for them.

I imagine it’s kind of how people in England felt when Queen Elizabeth passed. Most Brits can’t remember a time when Elizabeth wasn’t queen, and they’re almost feeling like “King who?”  But it was also clear, for those of us who watched, that Queen Elizabeth planned her own funeral down to the last detail. She even picked the hymns that were sung.

In a similar way, Moses needs to get God’s people ready to move on without him. He needs to plan those final details. He tells the people that he’s going to be dying. He tells them that God will still be there and will be faithful to them, and that God will support them along the way.

Most importantly, Moses tells them there will be another – another leader like Moses. God will provide someone who will be a “shepherd of the people”. He will be one of the people, and he will be a prophet who will teach God’s word faithfully, and the people will be accountable to follow his teachings.

In a way, God fulfilled this promise through Joshua, Moses’ successor. But God will also fulfill this promise a second time, in a much broader context, when the Messiah comes. This Messiah would be someone who:

• Is from the Jewish people
• Is a good shepherd
• Is a redeemer
• Is a miracle worker
• Is a teacher of the Law
• Who challenges the kings of the earth
• Who is mediator between God and human beings

As it happens, the name Joshua and the name Jesus mean the same thing in Hebrew: “God is our deliverer” – or to put it more succinctly, “Saviour”.

This reading from Deuteronomy is not only a comfort to the people of Israel: it is also a prophecy of someone else who is coming, whose arrival will signal the beginning of a new age – which leads us directly into today’s reading from the Gospel of Mark.

Let me set the scene:

We find ourselves in the synagogue in Capernaum on the Sabbath Day. It is a breathtakingly beautiful location: warm and sunny, at the top of a gentle hill, with the village of Capernaum surrounding on three sides. As we sit in the synagogue, we can hear the waves of the Sea of Galilee lapping on the shore. The scent of flowers drifts in between the pillars of the synagogue. As we look around at those pillars, we are reminded of what our neighbors have told us: that the local Roman centurion built this synagogue for us, for our town. The local centurion is a Gentile believer in God, and this synagogue is here because of him.  (The people don’t know it yet, but that same centurion will one day ask Jesus to heal his servant, and he will say, “Lord I am not worthy to have you come under my roof, but say the word and my servant will be healed…” And Jesus will answer he has not found such faith even among the people of Israel. But that day is still in the future…)

Today, in the synagogue, the local rabbi gets up and leads us in prayer. Then he motions to any young men who would like to share a thought, and Jesus gets up and comes to the front. Mark doesn’t say which scripture Jesus was teaching on that morning, but he says the people were captivated, because Jesus taught them with authority “and not like the scribes”. (I don’t think that Mark meant to slam the scribes; I think what he was meant was that, in Jesus’ day, Jewish scribes and teachers frequently taught by quoting other teachers – a technique still used today.)

But Jesus didn’t need this. Jesus teaches God’s word directly. He had no need to quote anyone else because he was the authority. And the people are enjoying his teaching immensely! They’re loving every moment of listening to him.

Suddenly a deranged man, who Mark tells us ‘had an unclean spirit’ breaks in to Jesus’ teaching. The gentle voice of the Savior is interrupted by a man with a harsher voice, and an attitude that has none of God’s love in it. And he says:

“What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God.”

Imagine how troubling this would have been to Jesus’ listeners – first, for Jesus to be interrupted; and second to hear Jesus accused of wrongdoing – in a voice that is so sure of the accusation.

I’d like us to step back for a moment and notice how clever this accusation is. It’s in three parts. Part one: a rude and accusatory question: “What do you have to do with us?” There is no right way to respond to a question like that, because it’s not really a question; it’s an accusation.

Part two: “Have you come to destroy us?” Why would this question even make sense? Anybody who’s listening to Jesus can feel the life that’s in his words. Listening to Jesus speaks to something deep within each person and brings life. The question is posed to cast doubt on a man who is not only innocent of the charge but is in fact working to do exactly the opposite of destroying life – he is bringing life.

So we have a rude and accusatory question, followed by an outright lie. Then part three: a truth: “I know who you are – the Holy One of God.” God’s enemies know exactly who Jesus is, and they will even admit it if it works to their advantage.

So again the progression is: accusatory question – outright lie – absolute truth. The intended result is confusion, disarray, and questioning on the part of the listeners… and eventually, if people listen long enough, a loss of faith; a loss of trust. It’s impossible to mix truth with lies and be faithful to God.

This same progression can be seen in the temptation of God’s first people in the Garden of Eden. The snake leads off with an accusatory question: “Did God say ‘you shall not eat of any tree in the garden?’” Followed by an outright lie: “you will not die”. Followed by an absolute truth: “you will be like God, knowing good and evil”.

Same progression, same technique!  Watch for this pattern – accusation, lie, truth – in conversations, at work, in politics, watching the news, you name it. Watch for this.

Back to the synagogue in Capernaum… Mark tells us this man who is speaking ‘had an evil spirit’.  We in the 21^st century in America don’t usually put much stock in talk about evil spirits and things like that. We see movies like The Exorcist as entertainment, as fantasy – not as fact. And there are a lot of good reasons for that.

But I can also tell you that our Christian brothers and sisters in Africa often see things differently. I suspect that’s because they’ve been eyewitnesses to more in-your-face evil than we have. They have seen, some of them, with their own eyes, the violence in Darfur, the burning of villages in South Sudan, the genocide in Rwanda, the decades-long civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo. They know that pure evil exists; and they know that sometimes people give in to it.

Not that I recommend going and reading up on evil spirits – I do not! – but there might be something more to the subject than we are typically led to believe. And let’s face it – even without evil spirits there are plenty of death-dealing forces in our world: addiction, racism, xenophobia, uncontrollable anger, envy, pollution of our air and water, and so much more. One scholar writes that these things:

“move through the world as though by a kind of cunning. They resist, sidestep, or co-opt our best attempts to overcome them. [Trying to solve these problems is] less like figuring out a puzzle and more like wrestling with a beast.”[1]

It would be too easy to throw up our hands and say “What can we do?” But we follow a God who is greater than all of that. And God calls us to share in the daunting task of restoring this world – bit by bit, acre by acre, neighborhood by neighborhood.

Going back to that morning in the synagogue… notice how Jesus handles the situation. He doesn’t argue with this man. He doesn’t try to reason with him, or make him feel better about the situation. He doesn’t try to find some middle ground. There are times when listening and asking questions are the right things to do – but not when evil is right up in your face.

Instead, Jesus says: “Be silent and come out of him!”

Jesus isn’t even speaking to the man; he’s speaking to the spirit inside the man. What we are witnessing here is a healing. The evil spirit is gone and the man is free! And the people in the synagogue have just witnessed Jesus’ first healing miracle.

We were talking at Bible study this past week about the gifts of the Holy Spirit – the miraculous ones, that is – things like speaking in tongues, or healing, or prophecy. There are some churches where these things seem to happen all the time, like everyday occurrences. But in other churches, like the one I was raised in, people don’t quite know what to make of the gifts of the Spirit. Are they really for real? Do miracles really happen? Have you ever seen one?

For me the answers to these questions are: yes, yes, and I’ve seen evidence of it. Yes, the gifts of the Spirit are real. Yes, miracles really happen. And I’ve never actually witnessed one (that I know of) but I know a woman whose eyes were healed – after the healing she never wore glasses again. The spiritual world is real, and spiritual gifts are real.

As we read this passage in Mark, the first spiritual gift that Jesus uses on this day is teaching. A lot of people in the world teach – but teaching in the Spirit, as a spiritual gift, comes with a power and authority that is otherworldly. Mark comments that the people were: “astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority.” This is evidence of the Holy Spirit’s presence.

The second gift of the Spirit Jesus displays is the gift of Discernment – sometimes called Prophecy. It’s ability to know something with absolute certainty, that you couldn’t possibly know unless God told you. Jesus uses this gift when he perceives that the man is being held captive by an evil spirit. He does not see the man as evil; he sees the man being held captive by something stronger than himself. Jesus perceives the evil spirit, and he speaks to it directly.

The third gift of the Spirit Jesus displays is Healing – which in this case might also be called Exorcism. He commands the evil spirit to leave; and the man is free. He is healed, forgiven, and no longer enslaved by evil.

The people who were there that day, as Jesus said these things, would have felt deep within themselves a sense of both the rightness of his words, and the compassion in his words. They would have sensed within the synagogue a feeling of peace and well-being – shalom. And when this man interrupted the teaching, it would have been so jarring people would have immediately known something was wrong; but they see Jesus confront the evil spirit and dismiss it with just a few words. Jesus brings a new reality: a reality in which people who are deeply ill can be healed; in which people who are deeply sinful can be forgiven; in which people – all people – are deeply loved by God.

Ruins of the ancient great Jewish synagogue at Capernaum or Kfar Nahum at the shore of Galilee lake northern Israel

Needless to say, back in Capernaum, word got around. As Jesus once said, you can’t light a lamp and put it under a bushel. Jesus – just by being who he is – is fulfilling the promises Moses made all those years ago. By the next morning, all of Capernaum and the surrounding area had heard what Jesus had done.

For us today, to follow Jesus means to trust that he is who he said he is; and to join Jesus in confronting evil wherever we may find it. This is also why we pray: to bring Jesus’ healing power into those parts of the world that touch our lives. This is also why we worship: because it is impossible to witness what Jesus does, in love and in power, without talking about it! We worship a God who answers prayers, and who sets prisoners free.

Wherever we see needs in this world, we are called to bring them to Jesus; and listen to see if Jesus would like us to help set things right. But wherever we see evil in this world, whatever it may be, bring it to Jesus in prayer. As the people in Capernaum learned that morning, Jesus’ power is real and his love never ends. AMEN

[1] SALT

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