The Demons Inside, the Demons Outside
Mark 1:23-39
Sermon delivered Sunday, February 8, 2009
by Deborah Burnham
And there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit; and he cried out, Saying, Let us alone; what have we to do with thee, thou Jesus of Nazareth? art thou come to destroy us? I know thee who thou art, the Holy One of God. And Jesus rebuked him, saying, Hold thy peace, and come out of him. And when the unclean spirit had torn him, and cried with a loud voice, he came out of him. And they were all amazed, insomuch that they questioned among themselves, saying, What thing is this? what new doctrine is this? for with authority commandeth he even the unclean spirits, and they do obey him. And immediately his fame spread abroad throughout all the region round about Galilee. And forthwith, when they were come out of the synagogue, they entered into the house of Simon and Andrew, with James and John. But Simon's wife's mother lay sick of a fever, and anon they tell him of her. And he came and took her by the hand, and lifted her up; and immediately the fever left her, and she ministered unto them. And at even, when the sun did set, they brought unto him all that were diseased, and them that were possessed with devils. And all the city was gathered together at the door. And he healed many that were sick of divers diseases, and cast out many devils; and suffered not the devils to speak, because they knew him. And in the morning, rising up a great while before day, he went out, and departed into a solitary place, and there prayed. And Simon and they that were with him followed after him. And when they had found him, they said unto him, All men seek for thee. And he said unto them, Let us go into the next towns, that I may preach there also: for therefore came I forth. And he preached in their synagogues throughout all Galilee, and cast out devils.
As we begin thinking together about this gospel passage, I ask you to imagine, or remember, two pictures. One: a time when you’ve seen someone on the street shouting, singing, raving, or crying out loud. The tall, man in a thick jacket, even in summer, walking stiff-legged, reading aloud from a newspaper, or a battered notebook. Or the woman on the bench who calmly drinks coffee, then laughs, then the laughter turns to a perfect unsmiling, unstoppable sound of a duck. She quacks, we look at her then away.
The second picture: a time when you have been out of yourself with anger, with grief, with terror, or some mix of all those estranging powers. When you’ve been unable to speak, almost unable to breathe, unable to see anything but a blurred image in front of you – something broken, or something charred, or something that has utterly vanished. I’m asking you to hold those two images on a split screen in your mind while we go back to a puzzling image in the Gospel story. That image is the “unclean” spirit, wording that many of us know even though it’s been re-translated out of the newer versions of the Bible. I want to talk about those words and think about the presence of these strange forces in the Gospel story, those forces that Mark calls alternately “unclean spirits” or “devils”. Now, the New Testament is of two minds about these spirits. In some stories, they seem to be external – forces from the outside. In other places, they are pretty clearly internal, very much a part of the minds and souls of those they possess. But whether they are outside, maybe the hairy goatlike creatures that the Old Testament saw as demons, or something bodiless and invisible, they can make their captives mute, deaf or blind; they can cause them to scream, or curse, or preach. They are “separate” in some way from the human who houses them; separate because they can be, as nearly every version of the stories says, cast out. Sometimes on Sunday mornings I’m confused by the scripture readings until I read back a few verses and see what’s been going on. In a passage from Mark that comes before today’s Gospel reading, we see Jesus near the beginning of his ministry, learning to heal those who are sick with leprosy or fever, as well as those who house a demon. Let’s hear a passage just before today’s reading. It shows Jesus in a particularly dramatic act of healing:
And there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit; and he cried out, saying, Let us alone; what have we to do with thee, thou Jesus of Nazareth? art thou come to destroy us? I know thee who thou art, the Holy One of God. And Jesus rebuked him, saying, Hold thy peace, and come out of him. And when the unclean spirit had torn him, and cried with a loud voice, he came out of him. And they were all amazed, saying, What thing is this? what new doctrine is this? for with authority commandeth he even the unclean spirits, and they do obey him.
This is quite a powerful spirit. It cries out, it asks very pointed questions, it tears at the body where it’s living. It’s a spirit who claims to know Jesus’ name and his mission, a kind of knowledge which gives power. When he came to heal those who were sick, with fever, for example, he seems to have used the same skill – that is, he separates the healthy from the unhealthy part of the body. Let’s listen again to a few verses, one of the many parts of the New Testament that I think we would love to take literally.
Simon's wife's mother lay sick of a fever. And he came and took her by the hand, and lifted her up; and immediately the fever left her, and she ministered unto them.
He took her by the hand, the fever left, like an unwelcome guest, and she was well – well enough to fix dinner, apparently.
And the word spread: people came in droves, the sick and the possessed, more fevers and more plague, more demons. More unclean spirits. Mark says, though he may be exaggerating, that the whole city was at the door. Were they bringing their sick families and friends; had they come, hoping to be healed themselves, or had they come to gaze and gawk? We don’t know. We do know that suddenly Jesus was known as a healer, one who could cool fevers and cast out unclean spirits, even those spirits who knew his name.
This must have been hard work, facing the heat and noise of all this suffering. How did he do it? I want to suggest that there is, in the familiar language of this story, an explanation of Jesus’ method, something he’d learned facing that first angry demon in the synagogue. He understood exactly how to speak, or in the wonderful language of this version, how to “rebuke” that loud, angry spirit. He says “Hold thy peace”, which of course means ‘hush”, “quiet down”. This is a familiar phrase. We hear it in traditional wedding ceremonies; we can find it in the Old Testament where it’s usually used to get someone else to stop talking or fighting. We’ve said it ourselves, and had it said at us. But there’s a bit in the book of Job that I think gives some new insight into this phrase that we take for granted and, at least for me, helps explain how Jesus was able to heal. Job is arguing with some of those annoying people who have come by to tell him how to think. They’re saying “I know how you feel, and if you’d only cheer up a bit….” He wants them to stop talking. Job wants silence and, like Jesus, he says “hold your peace”. He says “Hold your peace, and let me alone.” And only a few verses later, he says, “Hold your peace and you will find wisdom.” Let’s think for a moment about that connection: “hold your peace, and you will find wisdom.” How can Job talk about wisdom here? He’s in agony: he’s lost almost everything, his friends are nagging him, he’s naked and itching, he wants to scream or cry – why, we might not be surprised to see him ranting at the train station, or stalking down 36th Street. But some moment of grace, like a cool breath of wind, like a kiss, has told him what to say: “hold your peace”. He says it as if peace is something that you can touch, hold in your hands, and maybe, just maybe, keep.
Jesus in the synagogue, calming the angry man and his demon, had that same moment of grace. He understood that to say “hold your peace” suggests that peace is something you can have and hold. So he offers that loud spirit something it may have lost, or forgotten: he offers it peace. He says “reach into yourself, find the peace that I believe still lives in you.” This, for me, is the most astonishing part of the Gospel reading: the idea that Jesus believed peace was present, perhaps crouching or cringing but present nonetheless, in that furious man. He believed in that peace, he said so, and the raucous spirit leapt out, leaving the man, yes, in peace.
Mark makes it clear that after a while, Jesus was tired. And what did he do? He went away, before the sun came up, to a solitary place, and he prayed. He offered himself the same peace he had held out, so openly and generously, to the raucous spirit in the synagogue. The compassion that allowed him to see the promise of peace in the loudest, the most unclean of spirits he turned upon himself, going alone to pray. So, what’s in this story for us? On the surface, perhaps a warning to those who heal, to those who care for others, to take time out. How unsurprising. There has to be more. Let’s go back and think about those images we’ve been holding on our mind’s screen, the man shouting on the street, reading from his notebook, some string of words that might contain, in their unpunctuated, penciled lines, the secret of some other universe. And the woman, on the bench, speaking in a language for which there is no dictionary, no clarifying grammar. We can pray that someone will offer them a moment of peace. Let’s remember too, our frantic selves, hands and jaws and scalps clenched around our fear, or wrath, or loneliness. How we can barely see the sky, the snow, the gorgeous tracery of shadows in the bare trees. We can remember Jesus’ offer -- hold your peace – and it may be there, in our chilly, shaking hands, for us to hold.
© 2009 by Deborah Burnham
