A Rude Interruption – Mark 1: 21-28
Thomas J Parlette
“A Rude Interruption”
Mark 1: 21-28
1/29/12
There is a video making the rounds of You Tube – maybe you’ve seen it. A violist is playing a complicated piece of music in what looks to be a small performance area for an intimate group of people – perhaps it’s an audition, maybe it’s a workshop of some sort, I don’t know. He comes to the end of his performance and you can hear a cell phone go off…
“Do-do-do, DO, do-do-do, DO, do-do-do, DO, DO.”
“Do-do-do, DO, do-do-do, DO, do-do-do, DO, DO.”
The violist stops, looks at the offending audience member – clearly annoyed by this rude interruption, but still in firm control of his emotions. And without missing a beat – he starts playing the cell phone’s ring tone on his viola. Then, to the delight of his audience, he improvises around the melody for 30 seconds or so. And then he ends with a shrug of his shoulders and a small bow – knowing he has made the best of this rude interruption.
You can watch it for yourself on You Tube by searching “violinist interrupted by a cell phone.”
This morning we consider one of the early stories in the Gospel of Mark, a story in which Jesus too faced a rude interruption during a worship service at the synagogue in Capernaum.
On the Sabbath, Jesus and his disciples went to the synagogue to participate in the normal worship service, and Jesus began to teach. We don’t know what he said exactly, but everyone was astounded at his teaching. Here was a teacher that taught with an authority, a perspective, an understanding that they were not used to hearing from the scribes.
More often than not, we come across a verse like this and we read into it a very negative portrayal of the scribes. The temptation is to think of the religious leadership as arrogant, or callous, driven by an adherence to the letter of the law rather than the spirit of the law. It’s easy to judge looking backward. But the fact is a scribes job was to pass on tradition, and that’s what these leaders were doing – simply passing on what had been handed down to them since the time of Moses. This comment about authority is not really a criticism of the scribes – it is more of a compliment for Jesus.
Whatever it was that he taught that day, people were astounded. This Jesus was different. Something about what he said and how he said, it was different. It was new. They were amazed. They had never heard their scriptures and traditions sound like this before.
But then, in the middle of the service, a man with an unclean spirit emerged. Whether he barged in from the back or whether he had been there the whole time, worshiping with everyone else – we don’t know. What we do know is that he had an unclean or impure spirit.
Normally when we envision this rude interruption, we imagine a howling, screeching, head-swiveling demon possessed individual like we see in the movies. And there are instances in the Bible where we meet those sort of demons. But I wonder about this particular man with an unclean spirit. Was he a raving lunatic – or was he something different. The word used here for unclean or impure actually means “contrary to the sacred, apart from God.”(1) This man might well have been someone who had shown at worship that morning upset with God, wondering why God had allowed things to turn out badly for him. Maybe he had doubts about God, maybe he was struggling with whether God even existed. Or maybe he was one of those people who attended services every week, listening to scriptures about kindness and justice, forgiveness and love and then went back home, went back to work, just as nasty and bitter and unforgiving as he had always been. I know that may put this man with an unclean spirit a little too uncomfortably close to us in the pews even today – but I wonder if that’s not the intent here.
This man with an unclean spirit stands up in the middle of worship and rudely interrupts Jesus’ teaching. He shouts out so everyone can hear “What is this all about Jesus. What have you to do with us? You’re not from here- you’re from Nazareth. You don’t know us. Our church is just fine, why should we listen to you. Have you come to change everything? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are – You are the holy one of God.”
Interesting that the man with the unclean spirit, the one who is contrary and separate from God – that’s the person who knows exactly who Jesus is.
And Jesus does something very odd in response. We might expect Jesus to say “That’s right, I am the Holy one of God – and ZAP, you’re out of here, Demon.” If Jesus were your typical action hero, this would be the time for him to say something like “Hasta La Vista Baby”, or “Come on, make my day.” But he doesn’t do that. He just says, “Be silent – and come out of him.”
Be silent. That’s what Jesus says. But I wonder, how did he say it?
Was it a command? – Silence, I’ve heard enough out of you demon!
Was it more like a finger held to the lips?– Shhhhh, I’m trying to lay low for now, don’t tell anybody, I don’t need the publicity right now!
Or did Jesus say be silent with a bit of a wince, knowing that he was the Holy One but not really ready to talk about it in public yet? Was this more of a “no comment, I’ll let the facts speak for themselves?”
We don’t know, but it’s interesting to consider.
After this little exchange, the unclean spirit convulses the man, cries out in a loud voice and comes out of him. Again, I wonder, what did this look like. You could picture it as the man having a seizure, writhing around on the floor, screaming out at the top of his lungs and then suddenly he is fine. I guess that’s the picture I’ve always had in my head of this story.
But maybe there’s another way to see it. Maybe the man continued to have what we would call a temper tantrum – maybe he ranted and raved for awhile about what Jesus was teaching. Maybe he pointed out that that we couldn’t afford these things Jesus spoke about, his ideas don’t make economic sense or we’ve tried that before and it didn’t work. But after crying out in frustration and exasperation – he gives up and shouts out “Oh alright, we’ll try it Jesus’ way. Fine.”
And all of a sudden his spirit is in synch with God again.
I don’t know, but maybe that’s another way to look at this.
At any rate, the people in worship that day are amazed. They can’t believe what they have seen. This man with a spirit contrary to God is suddenly completely different.
First, they were astounded at Jesus’ teaching. They had never heard their traditions addressed like this before. Jesus was much different than the scribes. They were astounded at his words.
And then, they were amazed at his power. Not only did Jesus talk a good game, but his words actually meant something. They did something. Jesus words, his teaching, changed people and put them in synch with God.
They had never heard anything like this before. And now, thanks to this rude interruption, they had never seen anything like this before either. And word about Jesus began to spread.
You know, every so often, we have visitors drop by the church office. They come by looking for help with gas or food or warm clothes, maybe rent or utilities or a bus ticket. I remember one day, Sue, our administrative assistant, interrupted my usual Monday morning routine of reading through books and journals to prepare for the next Sunday’s sermon.
“There’s a young man here to see you. He says he needs to be blessed.”
Well, I thought I knew what that meant. He wanted me to “bless” him with some money- so I put aside my books and stepped out of the office to deal with the situation.
I invited the young man in. I could tell right away something was up. He was clearly agitated. He had a very nervous look about him. His eyes darted around the room, he couldn’t sit still – his feet were bouncing slightly up and down and he kept clenching and unclenching his hands. I made sure to keep my phone right nearby and my office door slightly ajar as I looked him up and down to see if he had anything like a concealed weapon anywhere – you never know these days.
I asked him what I could do for him.
And he said, “I need your blessing.”
What do you mean?
And he told me a long story that I couldn’t quite follow about his medical history and the drugs he was taking for depression and his manic episodes. He wasn’t happy with how the drugs were working and he had gone to another pastor in town who had done an exorcism for him, the pastor had called it a blessing ceremony. And he had felt a lot better after that. But now he felt like the demons were back and he couldn’t get in touch with that pastor and would I perform an exorcism. Would I do a blessing ceremony for him.
Well this was a first for me. We don’t do exorcisms in the Presbyterian Church. There is nothing in the Book of Order about how to do one. But I wanted to do something for this agitated young man.
“Well, I don’t do those kind of ceremonies, but if you’d like, we can pray together.” He said he’d like that.
Now luckily for me, Jim Walts had been by the day before. Jim makes the wooden crib crosses we give out at baptisms and he had just dropped off a fresh batch. I had them right in front of me on the shelf. So I gave this young man a wooden cross to hold. And I began telling him some of the Bible stories I know by heart. I started with this story about the man with the unclean spirit in the synagogue. He sat in my office squeezing and rubbing that cross, his eyes wide as I told him the story. I told him the one about Jesus calming the storm and I told him the story about Bartimaeus and how Jesus healed him of blindness. And then we prayed together. With our heads bowed, I could see his feet were not bouncing up and down anymore. He was still holding the wooden cross, but he wasn’t rubbing grooves into it anymore.
After our blessing, the young man made some calls and found a friend who was at home and would take him in for awhile. So I drove him over to his friends house.
Just as he was getting out of the car, he turned to me and said, “I’ve never heard those bible stories like that before.” And he got out of the car, still clutching that wooden cross, healed I think, in some small way.
Now I am not a faith healer. I am usually quite suspicious of people who claim they have that kind of power. I don’t want to pretend that I have any special powers – I don’t have the power to heal.
But what I can do is tell stories about the one who can heal all our wounds, all our hurts, all our sorrows and all our griefs. We are all a bit like this man in the synagogue. We all have an unclean spirit at times. Sometimes it is a physical situation that gets the best of us – like the young man who came to the office that day. And other times it might be an attitude we bring, a hurt we’ve never gotten over, a pain we continue to live with or a nagging doubt about God’s love for us that makes us unclean or contrary to God. We all carry our faith around like that little wooden cross. Sometimes we just hold it in our hands – and sometimes we are rubbing new grooves into the wood as we pray with all our might.
But what we can see in this story about a rude interruption is that Jesus not only talks a good game, but his words actually mean something. Jesus words have authority. They accomplish things. The new teaching that amazed and astonished people was that Jesus’ words actually heal. His words heal all our wounds, all our hurts, all our sorrows and all our griefs. Jesus words put us back in synch with the Divine.
I suppose sometimes a rude interruption is just what we need.
May God be praised. Amen.
1. Ofelia Ortega, Feasting on the Word, Year B, Vol. 1. Westminster John Knox Press, 2008, pg 310.
