This sermon was preached on Sunday, January 31 for a joint online service with St. Andrew's and St. Michael's. The text for this sermon was: Mark 1:21-28.
“Do you renounce Satan and all the spiritual forces of wickedness that rebel against God?”
“Do you renounce the evil powers of this world which corrupt and destroy the creatures of God?”
“Do you renounce all sinful desires that draw you from the love of God?”
First, there’s the questions’ old-fashioned language of Satan and spiritual forces of wickedness. It feels terribly out of place. And secondly, what does all of this have to do with the tiny, precious baby or the huge, overwhelming love we’re here to celebrate? Is it really necessary to bring all this unpleasantness up, here and now?
The answer of course is yes. These questions are necessary if we’re to be able to fully answer the next three, the nice ones where we say yes to following and loving Jesus. The truth is that every yes we say in this life inherently contains a no. Our faith does not only require us to affirm life and love. It also demands that we reject death and cruelty and all the other forces that threaten to overwhelm them.
The world of the Gospel of Mark is infused with good and evil forces acting on humankind. When we meet Jesus in the waters of the Jordan in the first scene, the Holy Spirit of God descends upon him and drives him into the wilderness to confront Satan. Jesus’ first public act of his ministry is his confrontation of a man possessed by an unclean spirit. The first thing that the demon says to Jesus is a rhetorical and taunting question. “What have you to do with us?” Jesus is the Holy One of God, after all. In Matthew Thiessen’s book, “Jesus and the Forces of Death,” the Biblical scholar reminds us that holiness was defined by its separation from impurity. In those days, Jews knew that too much impurity in the temple would cause God to withdraw God’s holiness from that place. But Jesus was different. He didn’t just purify the synagogue. Jesus destroyed the source of uncleanness itself. And in freeing the man from his possession, Jesus answered the demon’s taunt. Jesus has everything to do with the forces of death.
We are still haunted by the demons’ question today. In fact, I’ve found it’s often the first tactic the forces of evil employ when they are uncovered. It’s easy, so so easy, to pretend that much of the unpleasantness of life was nothing to do with us, or with our faith. Our sacred places often feel that much more holy because we work hard to separate them from the violence and chaos and pain of the rest of society. But ignoring and walking away from evil is not the same as renouncing it. Our faith demands that we follow Jesus in rooting out the sources of pain and destruction themselves.
Before coming to Wellesley, I lived in Berkeley, California, a city defined by stark contrasts. While North Berkeley neighborhoods are lined with beautiful gardens of exquisite succulents, Berkeley’s downtown streets are crowded with the tents and sleeping bags of people struggling with chronic homelessness. Simply walking through the downtown means being mocked by that infernal question, “What do I have to do with all of this suffering?” And the easiest thing to do, the thing I most often did to simply get where I was going, was to silently affirm that it had nothing to do with me, or the cross that hung around my neck.
And yet, the Episcopal parish a block or two from me had a different answer. When those same forces of poverty and homelessness taunted, “What does Jesus Christ have to do with us?” This parish responded, “Everything. Jesus has everything to do with you and so do we.” The congregation struck out to destroy homelessness at its source. They elected to donate their own parish house and land to the first affordable housing project in North Berkeley in thirty years, battling to erect low-cost apartments for the unhoused elderly struggling on the city’s downtown streets.
Just last week, as the forces of death and disease continued to terrorize the British population, Salisbury Cathedral knew the answer to their insidious taunt, too. The Cathedral has opened its doors to become a vaccination distribution center, helping the local elderly get access to life-saving vaccines. As the patients wait in socially distanced lines for their “jabs,” the Cathedral’s organists serenade them with the ancient organ’s 4,000 pipes. Beloved hymns—Jerusalem, Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring—are filling the Cathedral’s sanctuary once more, bringing tears to eyes and lifting spirits. Jesus has everything to do with the pain and heartache here, the organ music sings. And so do we.
When our parishioners collect bag after bag of non-perishables for B-Love and St. Stephen’s, when we pack lunches for Common Cathedral in Downtown Boston, we tell the forces of hunger and poverty – Jesus is out to get you. When we gather on Zoom to tackle the tough questions of how to be anti-racist together, we tell the forces of racism and prejudice – Jesus has everything to do with you. And when we pray the names of the loved ones we miss and the ones we lost, we say to death – Jesus will win over you in the end, just you wait.
Today, right after this, both our parishes will gather for our annual meetings. It’s a moment to get through some of the important business of the church—budgets and elections and such—and it’s also a time for saying yes and saying no. Our communities gather to remind ourselves of our collective purpose, to drop the false separation between our everyday lives and our faith. We remember what our communities are here to say yes to in Jesus: the holy spirit of life and community and healing love. And in that wholehearted yes is also Jesus’ resounding no, no to the forces of death and isolation and pain. We renounce you, we renounce you, we renounce you.
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