ALL SAINTS MARGARET STREET

EPIPHANY 4, 2006
HIGH MASS
Fr Alan Moses

Twenty odd years ago, the actor Alec McCowen toured the country giving readings of St. Mark’s Gospel. When we heard him do this, he stood on the stage of the Adam Smith theatre in Kirkcaldy, holding a small New Testament - just in case his memory failed - ( it didn’t) -and recited the whole Gospel.

This year at Mass on Sunday we are reading through the Gospel according to Mark. Mark is the shortest of the four gospels and now generally regarded as the first. On Sundays of course we get rather short sections which hearers, and indeed preachers, can cope with. But this fragmentation means that we miss the drama of the whole. So I would like to suggest that you do something like Alec McCowen - remember that the Gospels were written to be read out loud rather than silently as we do - and read through the whole book - it should take less than an hour; not much more than an episode of your favourite soap. Doing this gives a powerful sense of how Mark tells the story of Jesus, the way he uses words and events to show the gathering storm, the reaction of people to Jesus.

It gives a feel for the dramatic pace; a pace which begins with a relentless driving sense of urgency, “and immediately” - with Jesus constantly moving on. Then it slows as it comes to the last few days - the events of Holy Week which take up by far the longest section of the story –slowing even more when we come to the crucifixion itself. Mark has been called a Passion story with an introduction - an apology – that is an explanation of why Jesus died.

Now, let’s take a look at the passage we have been given this Sunday. We are at the beginning of the gospel. Jesus has been baptised by John in the Jordan, driven by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by Satan. After John the Baptist has been arrested, Jesus begins to preach and he calls his disciples - Simon and Andrew, James and John from their work as fishermen. Together, they go into Capernaum - the hometown of these men and the base for Jesus’ early ministry in Galilee. “And immediately” - a recurring phrase in Mark by which he communicates the sense of urgency - Jesus enters the synagogue and teaches.

“And they were astonished at his teaching, for he taught them as one who had authority, and not as the scribes.” The Greek word which our version translates as “authority” can also mean “power”. It is one of the features of Mark’s Gospel that while he speaks of Jesus teaching with authority, he actually gives us relatively little of the content of the teaching – and here, none at all. We are only told the impact that Jesus made as he taught. This is contrasted with the manner if teaching that people were used to from the scribes. Who were they? They were people, mostly Pharisees – who because of their literacy, were able to study and comment on the Law. By that time, very few people understood Hebrew any more and so when the Law and the Prophets were read in the synagogue a translation and commentary was given. The scribes were familiar with the large amount of commentary on the Law which sought to apply it to different situations. Their method was one we might compare with that of a lawyer in our society. It was to rely on precedent rather than being original. In the gospel we will see Jesus exercising his authority over the scriptures.

“And immediately” -those words again - “there was in the synagogue a man with an unclean spirit.” It is a feature of Mark’s story telling to begin with one thing, incorporate another, and then return to the original.

If there is one thing in the gospels which seems remote and strange to us, which seems like a great gulf fixed between our age and then, it is the language of unclean spirits, of demons. What are we to make of this?

This is not just a theoretical exercise. Only a couple of weeks ago, there was a news story about a Congolese pastor who was alleged to have diagnosed children as possessed by evil spirits and suggested that they be sent home to the Congo to be killed.

It is significant in the gospel that this incident happens in the synagogue, the holy place. The power of evil is present there too. As the gospel story moves on, it is the religious powers that be who are Jesus’ most determined opponents. Evil is present in the Church too, and not just in strange foreign imports.

At another level, many would feel that such language makes the whole gospel incredible. I found something helpful in Austin Farrer, a contemporary and friend of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien at Oxford, the Warden of Keble College, a considerable theologian, philosopher and preacher. Although his sermons are regularly reprinted and his writings studied, unfortunately they are not the stuff of Hollywood blockbuster movies. In “Love Almighty and Ills Unlimited” he speaks of how the contemporaries of Jesus understood mental illness as the work of forces beyond the control of the sufferers. This was a way of saying that it was not the fault of these sufferers.

Optimistic rationalists of our scientific era which really got under way in the 18th century, tended to dismiss all this as primitive and outmoded. Human improvement would eradicate such things as progress marched on. Two things happened to dent this sunny optimism.

One was the abundant evidence of the power of evil in the past century - an evil which seems to have been greater than the sum of its individual parts, an evil which seized control of not merely the individuals but communities and nations in a welter of destruction which laid waste not merely primitive societies but some of the most sophisticated in the world.

The Church has long recognised the dangers which lurk in the language of the demonic. How it can be used to demonise others. How it can be used as a means of evading our own moral responsibility.

It is important for us to note that in this passage, the exorcism which Jesus carries out, is secondary to his teaching. It is that “new teaching” which is the source of the authority by which he is able to silence the unclean spirit. In the Gospel Jesus only responds to needs like this. He does not go looking for them to demonstrate his power. He does not use this power to force belief. People are always left free to choose - and increasingly they choose not to believe.

“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.’”

If our world’s history has given us a renewed consciousness of the human potential for wickedness, the study of the human subconscious has made us more aware of the power of forces deep within us to distort our lives. We do not have to be mentally ill to recognise the way in which our inner demons, as we often call them, seem to recognise the truth which would set us free, and reject it, preferring us to remain in captivity. We lie to ourselves about addictions or destructive behaviour or hateful prejudices and resentments, justifying and excusing them, rather than realising that in facing the truth we finding the Jesus who says to us “Be silent and come out of him.”, the one “with authority, he commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him”.