“Jesus Christ, Superstar”

Wow, this Jesus of the Gospel According to Mark –he’s really something!  Jesus the exorcist!  Not really the “gentle Jesus,” most of us learned about in Sunday School – the one my old friend Margie Brown likes to call “moo cow Jesus.”  You know him, right?  He’s the Jesus of childhood – the one with the big, brown, cow eyes.  That Jesus is dull as dishwater – meek and mild – like Palmolive, he can wash your sins away, and moisturize your soul at the same time!  Only problem is, he’s pretty boring.

But Mark’s Jesus is something else: he’s a superstar!  “When ... he entered the synagogue and taught, ²²They were astounded at his teaching,” because “he taught them as one having authority.”  And when the “man with an unclean spirit” starts yelling at Jesus, he rebuked the demon, “‘Be silent, and come out of him!’ ²⁶And the ... [evil] spirit, did – it came out.”  Mark says “²⁷They were all amazed, and ... his fame began to spread” far and wide.  No kidding, right?  When a guy can cast out demons, he makes a name for himself.  Jesus gets lot more exciting than your usual rabbi – you, know more like Harry Potter saving the world from dementors than an ordinary pastor or teacher like me or Jen.

Now I’m not sure we really want our Congregational worship to be like that – some of you have heard me say that when I was a teenager, growing up in a UCC church very much like ours, I liked to shock my elders who made the mistake of asking me what I wanted to do when I grew up, “I want to be a TV faith healer.”  I loved seeing the look that would cross over their faces, and my poor mother would apologize for me and we’d beat a hasty retreat.  We did not cast out demons or heal the sick in our Sunday worship services – if you confronted a Southern lady with the devil she’d hand him a jello salad!

My passion was for theatre and films, because they brought real truth to life – you know, people laughed, people cried, people really changed.  No transformation ever happened for me in worship – our sanctuary was a lecture hall where we heard about theology – and we sang only old music from long ago and far away.  That was during the ‘60s and ‘70s too – the era of the Civil Rights movement and hippie Jesus freaks. My high school choirs sang “Jesus Christ, Superstar, and I was the pianist.  That was 10 times better than what we sang in church.  But when my church youth group tried to do “Godspell,” the choir director and Deacons wouldn’t let us sing that “secular” music in the sanctuary – we had to stage it in Fellowship Hall.  The most exciting thing we did at church was the annual pulpit exchange with the African-American UCC church across town – then we’d get to join forces and sing Gospel with them. Other than that, not much happened at church. It was as boring as white bread and butter.  People did not come to church for transformation; they came for affirmation.  They came for comfort. 

You realize that the synagogue where Jesus began his healing ministry, in the little lakeside fishing town of Capernaum, wasn’t that unlike my home church in NC, or our little church here in Brookfield.  Their Lake Gennesaret, which the Bible fancies up by calling it the “the Sea of Galilee,” is only twice as big as Candlewood Lake.  You get the idea:  The synagogue in this fishing village was a place where ordinary people went every Sabbath to study scriptures and pray.  It was a weekly routine for them, as it had been for their fathers, and their fathers’ fathers.  The last thing they expected was for “the Holy One of God” to show up and try to actually do anything!

What about us? Have we gotten so used to our faith routines – the familiar stories, the comforting prayers and hymns, the friendly people and delicious Fellowship Hour snacks – have we gotten so used to Christianity that we have turned Jesus Christ, Son of God and Savior of the World, into a do-nothing “moo cow Jesus”? I hope not!

I love Annie Dillard’s quote about the power of worship to transform us, from her book Teaching a Stone to Talk: “On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside of the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, making up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies hats and straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake someday and ... draw us out to where we can never return.” (p. 40)

Remember the passion the church used to have?  People used to happily die for their faith – that’s how committed they were to “the way, the truth, and the life of Jesus.”  (That makes all our fuss over submitting an annual pledge card seem kind of silly by comparison, doesn’t it?)  Saint Paul had that kind of commitment and passion to the new Way of Jesus Christ – he was imprisoned, beaten, and finally executed – all because he could not contain the Good News of God’s transforming love for him.  Paul loved his Savior, his ^“one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.”  Paul knew Jesus had real power to save and transform people – because of the miracle of transformation that hit Paul on the road to Damascus, when he turned from the world’s most passionate persecutor of Christians into their most enthusiastic preacher.  He knew the amazing grace of Jesus Christ had the power to build up people in love – to really change them – the old teachers could only “puff up” students with knowledge.

Don’t we hope that people’s lives can really be transformed by getting to know Jesus through our church?  As we Pray, Share, and Welcome with Jesus, don’t we actually change in some way?  Do “unclean spirits” get cast out?  I know I’ve seen it.

Now before you think I’ve come a little unglued, let me try to explain.  There are many terrible mental and neurological syndromes – like epilepsy, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, clinical depression, Turette’s, whatever – that the ancient world might have understood as “demon possession.”  Many of these problems need a lot more than love and prayer to heal them – we are lucky to have so many new psychiatric drugs that can really help.  But when I say I’ve seen demons cast out, I’m thinking about the lesser “unclean spirits” that pop up now and then – in our homes, in our workplaces, even (God help us) in our churches. But the love of Jesus really can cast them out. 

Have you ever noticed the tone of a church meeting or family party change when it was suddenly taken over by a demon voice of envy, anger, pride, or greed?  And haven’t we witnessed the firm but loving voice of a good Christian casting out the demon of fear that can take over a room held hostage by those loud and insistent demon voices? Remember those words from “O Little Town of Bethlehem”? “Cast out our sin and enter in; be born to us today.”  That’s a beautiful way of thinking of sin – as a demon to be cast out, a demon who has to go, to make room for Jesus to come in.  Haven’t you ever done something you regretted and said, “I just don’t know what got into me!  I don’t know what possessed me!”  I know I have.  Just recently, in fact.

I confessed a few weeks ago that, like many of you, I’ve been trying to lose 10 pounds in the New Year.  (Thank you for your prayers, by the way.  I have managed to lose 4 in the past 4 weeks... so far so good.)  Only thing is I’m starving all the time.  I’m possessed with demons of hunger, it seems like, 24/7.  So one day last week I was coming home a little late for dinner, having missed my lunch, and when I arrived, there was this amazing feast spread out before me.  My wonderful husband had prepared 3 or 4 delicious and healthy vegetable dishes he’d cooked in the wok for Chinese New Year.  Yum!  But when I went to serve myself, I saw that there were no serving spoons on the table.  My family was just reaching in to get things with their own forks and chopsticks. 

Possessed with the spirit of Emily Post, I suppose, I went after serving spoons in the drawer, but there were no utensils to be found!  “Oh,” I think, “I’ll just get them from the dishwasher,” which I had loaded that morning.  But no, the dishwasher had not been run!  By now the demon voice in my head is shouting, “What???? Could no one in this family be troubled to push the start button on this dishwasher?  Does no one in my family have a functioning finger to start running the dishes????” I am biting my tongue and I go over to the sink with a dirty serving spoon and I wash it with that germ-killing hand soap, and I come back to the table, reaching my clean spoon into spinach... when my darling daughter, chatting happily with her dad, sweeps it right out from under my spoon and passes it to him!” 

I’m told that what the demon said then was not very nice, although I truly do not recall – since I think my head was spinning around in circles!  As I started to defend myself, as I started to lay out my case for the great injustice, my daughter just raised a hand and said “Shh!  Shh!  Don’t speak.  Just sit down and eat.” “But! But!” I say. “Shh!” she says, like she does to the dog.  “Shh!  You’re tired and hungry.  Just sit down and eat.”  I sit, but I try again, “But...” I say.  And my husband says, “Let us pray....” 

God’s grace is good.  I ate, and I felt better.  Love does cast out demons.

You see, when we are with those who love us, where we have the love and grace of Jesus Christ, we don’t have to beat ourselves up any more – we don’t have to try and try harder to get things right.  We have help.  Loving people around us can shout those demon voices down and throw them out ... with love.  As Paul says, “Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.”  Church can be a crucible for change – where miracles and wonders still break into this world’s mess, and the love of Jesus Christ still holds the power to transform it all. 

Thanks be to God for this Good News.  Amen.

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1 Cor. 8:1-6

¹Now concerning food sacrificed to idols: we know that “all of us possess knowledge.” Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. ²Anyone who claims to know something does not yet have the necessary knowledge; ³but anyone who loves God is known by him. ⁴Hence, as to the eating of food offered to idols, we know that “no idol in the world really exists,” and that “there is no God but one.” ⁵Indeed, even though there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth—as in fact there are many gods and many lords— ⁶yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.

Mark 1:21-28

²¹They went to Capernaum; and when the sabbath came, he entered the synagogue and taught. ²²They were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes. ²³Just then there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit, ²⁴and 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.” ²⁵But Jesus rebuked him, saying, “Be silent, and come out of him!” ²⁶And the unclean spirit, convulsing him and crying with a loud voice, came out of him. ²⁷They 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.” ²⁸At once his fame began to spread throughout the surrounding region of Galilee. ...