Put It to the Test

Focus Scripture: Mark 1:21-28

January 28, 2024 – 4^th Sunday After Epiphany

Put It to the Test

Jesus knows who and what we are. The lesson from Mark’s gospel today is one of many examples of this. Whether Jesus is calling a tax collector to be an apostle, asking another person to drop his fishing nets to follow, or identifying and casting out an unclean spirit, Jesus always knew what people were about. As Jesus is God, this is not surprising.

Unfortunately, we are not always as adept at and equipped to do the same thing. Appearances and titles can throw us off, misleading us into being deceived by another. Depending on the context, this can and does do real harm.

Until recently, this episode of Jesus silencing and casting out a demon did not seem remarkable to me. After all, there are many scenarios similar to this one in the Gospels. Maybe you recall Jesus casting out many demons into a herd of swine (Matt 8:28-34). While there are specific, detailed encounters like the one we study today, there were numerous others, all mixed into those statements of Jesus healing many as he traveled around in his ministry.

God’s grace and work in these cases are obvious. The man in the temple was relieved of this demonic possession. That is the kind of thing that Jesus did every day that caused his fame to grow (v.28). The same thing would likely happen today.

There are details that we must consider from this temple scene that we might not have appreciated before: the location of this encounter and the description of the man. Let’s start with the latter part first. Unlike in other gospel descriptions, there is nothing noteworthy about this person, at least nothing so interesting that Mark feels the need to comment.

Instead, I imagine a normal person like any other, just with an “unclean” spirit. What, exactly, would that look like? Isn’t it possible that to a casual observer this could have been anyone? It was not until the spirit calls out – “Hey Jesus, I know who you are!” – that Jesus does or says anything to him. The man’s appearance and identity are not the most important details.

Much more important is the location of the encounter. They are in the temple. They aren’t in the street, or in someone’s home, or in some creepy attic, or in a field with livestock nearby, or anywhere else you might imagine. They are in the temple.

Bring this a step further. When Jesus drives out the evil spirit, the reaction of the people is not, “We cannot believe that there was an evil spirit among us. How could that be?” The evil among them seems unremarkable, at least to them. So Jesus is there with a “new teaching – with authority!” Evil was among them; it was so commonplace. New teaching was required. Jesus was the one to bring it. And he did. God’s work is plain for all to see.

Bringing this forward to today’s time and place, what is the lesson we can learn? Evil continues to vex us, from the mundane to the profound. Economic evil that victimizes the unwitting in the marketplace is real. Systemic racism that harms certain groups still needs to be eradicated. Even within the church, there is evil that is enabled by power dynamics. And then there is the victimization that makes headlines, stories of abuse and other horrors. While it might not be yelling, snarling, movie demons that leave hosts convulsing, the unclean spirits are real and do significant damage.

God’s work, God’s grace in this Gospel lesson is clear. Yes, Jesus was doing something new, delivering new lessons, and yes, the evil was being cast out, figuratively and literally,

God’s grace is alive and well today, too. God is doing incredible things through us, with us, and within us. God is changing our hearts and souls, bending us toward love and sanctification, away from evil. You might be thinking, “Bill, what do you have in mind when you talk about systemic evil?”

Let us consider an evil that bubbled to the top of the news cycle this week: capital punishment. Please know that I stand firmly with the official United Methodist Social Principles position of opposing the death penalty. It is important for us to understand why this truly is an evil among us, even if it lives within the temple of our criminal justice system, both at the federal level and in many states.

First, let me stipulate that there are some cases that are so egregious that our hunger for justice in a particular case can put us into a position of saying, “In general, I don’t like the death penalty, but in this case, it was the right thing to do.” It can be hard to feel sorry for the confessed murderer, the killer who seems irredeemable and who sometimes even asks for the penalty. These cases have existed, and those people have met their demise.

Yet, it does not make it right. The government taking official revenge on the condemned is never the right thing to do. The reasons are many; here are just a few.

First, this penalty is unfairly and inconsistently applied. There is a dark joke in the criminal justice system about capital punishment: If you don’t have the capital, you are getting the punishment. Those without financial resources to pay for skilled legal representation face the needle in far greater numbers.

Second, execution is a final and irreversible punishment in an imperfect criminal justice system. If even one innocent person faces execution, that should and must be enough to throw out the whole system, regardless of how egregious, violent, and reprehensible a single crime and criminal might be. Yes, the man who was gassed in Alabama committed a horrific crime. There is no question about that. But is justice served when the state snuffs out a person 35 years after the crime is committed? The benefit – zero – does not outweigh the harm. As a nation, we perpetuate a system that gets it wrong. A lot.

Here is a statistic that makes the point. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, since 1990, there have been 145 exonerations of people convicted of capital offenses. Some have been as a result of new DNA evidence, but most were from perjury, official misconduct, inadequate representation, or some combination of these factors. (Accessed Jan 27, 2024 at https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/database/innocence.)

Imagine being the convicted person – one of those 145 – knowing full well that you did not commit the crime. Imagine being a family member – mother, father, child, or spouse – of that death row inmate. It does not feel like much of a stretch to call the system evil.

Let’s go a step further. Of those 145 people, how many were Black? More than half: 77. According to the 2020 US Census, Black people make up 12% of the US population. Only 12% of the population comprise 53% of the exonerated people convicted of capital offenses. Do you see how we can call this systemic? A system is perfectly designed to give you the result it is giving, and this one is flawed. (Census data accessed Jan 27, 2024 at https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/stories/2021/08/2020-united-states-population-more-racially-ethnically-diverse-than-2010-figure-1.jpg.)

(Let’s not forget the corrosiveness of the work of executioner on those who must carry it out. That work is soul-damaging and life-limiting. That’s a topic for a different day.)

Finally, we must examine our own hearts and the messages to which we are exposed through the lens of Jesus. When we hear someone say that justice has been served, has it really? We must put it to the test. All of it. Because the evil that was so common, so casual about hanging around in the temple before Jesus got there, is also so common today.

And when we put it to the test, I know that God will be moving us in a different direction. Our God does not want us harming each other, no matter how much we want revenge. Jesus never sought revenge. When Jesus was hanging on that cross, experiencing his own execution, he did not say, “O Father, cast down fire and brimstone on these people. Get me off this cross so I may have revenge.”

No, Jesus prayed, “Forgive them. They know not what they do.”

Put it to the test. When we follow a path that sustains evil, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a life for a life, we are not following in the footsteps of Jesus. Instead, we are following an old teaching of revenge and retribution. We are not embracing a new teaching.

When we reach out in love to our neighbor, we are embracing that new teaching. When we challenge the status quo, we are embracing a new teaching. When we reject the world’s ideals of consumerism and advantage only to those who “earn” it, we are embracing a new teaching. And when we reject a rigid value system of religiosity that is in conflict with Christ’s message of love, grace, forgiveness, and tolerance, we are embracing a new teaching.

The world’s way: Put it to the test. Jesus’s way: Pick up your cross daily and follow Him.

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You are welcome to join the congregation of First United Methodist Church of Shelton (CT) in person or online at 10 AM Eastern Time any and every Sunday. Services are streamed live, and past services are recorded. The church's web address is www.UMCShelton.org.

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Questions? Comments? Feel free to post your thoughts. Please keep it civil. Peace to you, and thanks for reading. - Bill Florin