Saint Mark 1:21–28
Not long ago a friend sent me a message on Facebook. It was a meme which said: “If you can’t stand me bursting into song for no apparent reason then I’m afraid we can’t be friends.”
That is something I do quiet often. Most often it is a Broadway show tune or one of the classics from what is known as “The Great American Song Book.” At other times, under stress, it may be a hymn that soothes my soul. Sometimes it is something that I just make up. While I love to sing, especially in church, I confine my other public appearances to ballparks and hockey rinks for a robust rendition of “O Canada” and “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
I, like a lot of people I know, sing in the shower where the acoustics are usually quite good. It is here that I will belt out the big numbers from musicals. My “There’s No Business like Show Business” is sung with such volume and gusto that it would make Ethel Mermen jealous.
For some reason, recently I have found myself working on “Waltzing Matilda” a song the makes absolutely no sense to anybody but an Australian.
I have also been known to try a excerpt from grand opera. If I am feeling in especially good voice I have occasional burst forth with Puccini’s “Nessum Dorma” causing nearby windows to slam shut, dogs to howl, and some of my less neighbourly neighbours to yell, “Will you knock it off?” Sometimes they don’t use those words exactly but this is church.
I may be one of those people of whom it is said: “What they lack in intonation they make up for in enthusiasm.” Or, as my family would say: “Sometimes he’s good. Sometimes he’s loud. Now, if we could just get those two together.”
My thoughts have turned this week to a simpler song, not from theatre or opera but from Sesame Street: “One of these things is not like the others, one of these things just doesn’t belong. Can you tell which thing is not like the others by the time I finish my song?” Or sermon?
It might not be as easy to tell which one is not like the other in today’s gospel than we have come to believe. We think it would be super easy but think again. It might not be as simple as it all looks at first glance or even if we stared at it for two thousand years.
The congregation is just settling into their seats. “The synagogue is a place for prayer and for the reading and exposition of scripture.” It is just like this place, so we can picture the worshippers gathering wanting to be on time and attentive to the words of the ancient Scriptures as they are read. “Jesus begins to teach them. And though Mark gives us not a word of the content of Jesus’ teaching, Mark does vividly describe the reaction to Jesus’ presence and teaching.”1
He “taught them as one having authority.”2 As Eugene Peterson paraphrased it in The Message “so forthright, so confident—not quibbling and quoting like the religion scholars.”3 It was, according to The Living Bible, “quite unlike what they were used to hearing!”4
In other words Jesus didn’t stand up and give a book report, or try to impress the crowds with his scholarship or erudition, {a word he would probably have never used in any language} he talked about the life of faith in real ways that the people could easily understand.
Sometimes such talk cuts a little close to the heart as it did for one person in the crowd.
“Just then,” Saint Mark tells us, “a man in their synagogue who was possessed by an impure spirit cried out, ‘What do you want with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us?’”5
I saw this scene played out in a preaching class once by two of the finest professors I ever had, Dr. Don Chatfield and Dr. Don Wardlaw, who completely changed how I viewed the encounter.
Dr. Chatfield, played the poor guy with a troubled spirit and, to say the least, he way underplayed the role.
Let’s face it, when we think of we think of this guy we often think of him as a snivelling, creepy, character we would keep away from at any costs. We think of him like Gollum in The Lord of the Rings or Lord Voldemort from Harry Potter. But, if he was acting like that from the get-go, from the moment he tried to take a bulletin from an usher at the door, chances are very high that he wouldn’t have got in. No, claimed my professors, up until the moment Jesus stood up to preach with authority, the guy looked exactly like everybody else in the room. There was nothing that would have called anybody’s attention to him until the moment that Jesus began to speak.
So, in Dr. Chatfield’s portrayal, the man simply came up to Jesus and asked in a conversational tone: “What do you want with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us?”6
And we think this was a yelling match – the man yelling at Jesus and Jesus replying at the top of his lungs, like we see in the movies – but Dr. Wardlaw, cast in the role of Jesus, took a much subtler approach. Again, in a conversational tone he simply said, “Be quiet. Get out of him. Leave this poor guy alone.”
There was a slight shudder on Dr. Chatfield’s part as he calmly seated himself back with the class and all Dr. Wardlaw did was smile.
Throughout his ministry it would have been smarter for the demons to have kept a low profile, but they seem to have a “fatal attraction” to Jesus. Even though they seemed to sense that when Jesus taught things were on the move against all the evil forces in the world, they still approached him.
We could keep it safe there. Demons and evil spirits are the stuff of fantasy and nightmares. It may have taken us awhile to get over the one time we saw “The Exorcist” but that was just a movie. We don’t encounter the possessed in real life and if we do, and if they have insurance, we medicate. We can keep the strange at a safe distance, but we can’t do so with Jesus.
It has been suggested that “when we invite Christ into our lives, we expect a decorator to appear to spruce the place up a little.” Move a couch over here, paint a wall there, hang a picture in a different place. “But instead, you look out the window, and there’s a wrecking ball about to tear it all down and start over.”7
Folks, what I have been pondering this week, is that maybe we are called to be “one of those things that are not like the others” what if we are called to be “one of those things that doesn’t belong?” What if, because we have touched by Christ, we acted differently, saw the world differently, spoke differently? What if, because we have touched by Christ, the things that broke his heart – wars, violence, the homeless, the haters – broke ours too?
What if we lived so differently that people looking at us going about our everyday lives would say “there is something about them that is different, they seem to be possessed by a different spirit than everyone else.” They look normal, they act normal, but there is just something different about them that we just can’t quite figure out.
Saint John Chrysostom said once: “Let us astound them by our way of life. This is the unanswerable argument. Though we {speak} 10,000 ... words, if we do not exhibit a far better life, we gain nothing. Let us win them by our life.”9
Live as though we have been touched by Christ, freed to live in Christ, and his fame will continue to spread as it did through Galilee. Christ’s fame will spread through not only the city, the nation, and the world which is our highest hope. Live as though we have been touched by Christ and his fame might even spread even through Lakeview as, like us, people are drawn to the one who taught with authority to change hearts, minds, and lives.
Jesus Christ is the one not like the others. He is the one who isn’t the same. And he does leave us the same either.
Jesus Christ, our Lord, someone worth singing about.
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1. William H Willimon, “Get Out of Here, Jesus!,” Pulpit Resource, Year B, 49, no. 1 (January 2015): 15–17.
2. St. Mark 1:22b. (NRSVUE) [NRSVUE=The New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition]
3. Saint Mark 1:21-22. (MESSAGE) [MESSAGE=Eugene H. Peterson, The Message: The New Testament in Contemporary English (Colorado Springs,, CO: NavPress,1995).]
4. Saint Mark 1:22c. (TLB) [TLB=The Living Bible. Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale Publishing House, 1971]
5. St. Mark 1:23. (NIV) [NIV=The New International Version]
6. St. Mark 1:24. (NRSVUE)7. James C. Howell, “What Can We Say July 14? 5th after Pentecost,” James Howell’s Weekly Preaching Notions, January 1, 2018, https://jameshowellsweeklypreachingnotions.blogspot.com/2019/01/what-can-we-say-july-14-5th-after.html.
8. St. Mark 1: 27-28. (MESSAGE)
9. James C Howell, “What Can We Say January 28? 4th after Epiphany,” James Howell’s Weekly Preaching Notions, January 1, 2024, https://jameshowellsweeklypreachingnotions.blogspot.com/.
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