Sunday,
February 1, 2015
First
Congregational United Church of Christ – Sermon by Rev. Caela Simmons Wood
Have you ever been possessed?
Don’t worry. You don’t have to answer that out
loud. But I have been thinking a lot about the things that possess us this past
week. Our passage from the Gospel of Mark is all about Jesus removing an
unclean spirit from a man during a worship service. I have to say, I feel thankful
this is not anything that’s ever happened to me while I was preaching. But it
happened to Jesus. He was teaching in the synagogue at Capernaum when, all of a
sudden, an unclean spirit that had possessed a man made a loud noise,
disrupting the service.
I don’t pretend to know what you might think about
unclean spirits or demon possession. My guess is, you probably don’t think
about them too often at all. They aren’t particularly popular topics in our
society. But they are all over the place in the Bible. Seems to me we have to
deal with them.
Back in Jesus’s time, people got sick, just like
they do now. They became physically ill – run-of-the-mill colds, cancer, skin
diseases, the flu….all that same stuff. Just like us. And people were mentally
ill – depression, bipolar disorder, anxiety, dissociative disorder, eating
disorders, PTSD….all that same stuff. Just like us.
The difference, of course, is that we understand
health and illness in very different ways now. People in the ancient world
didn’t have the ability to look inside their bodies at tiny cell structures.
They couldn’t examine the brain the same way we can. They couldn’t measure
hormones, look at neural pathways. They didn’t do controlled laboratory
experiments. In Jesus’s time they mostly thought illness came from God – often
as some kind of punishment for bad behavior – or it came from forces of evil
that weren’t well-understood.
Nowadays we recognize that there are a lot of
things we still don’t understand about physical and mental illness, but most of
us don’t think of health setbacks as being heaven-sent or the result of our bad
behavior. And yet – stigma persists. Especially when it comes to mental illness
and it’s close cousin, addiction. Many are still embarrassed to seek the help they
so desperately need. Many are ashamed to talk about their experiences with
mental illness and addiction.
Please hear me loud and clear when I say this:
physical illness, mental illness, addiction do not come from God or from a
demon. Not at all.
And yet – I find the language used in these ancient
texts of possession to be very accurate in describing the effects of illness and addiction.
I am assuming that virtually all of us in this room
have encountered addiction or mental illness in an up-close-and-personal way.
We have either struggled ourselves or someone in our family or a dear friend
has struggled. Those struggles often look a lot like possession to me.
Something we don’t really understand appears to take over a person we love
dearly and we can’t figure out how to get them back.
I remember so clearly what it felt like when I was
struggling with a bout of anxiety and depression about a decade ago. I had been
walking through this nasty cycle of anxiety and general malaise for months. I
was kind of a wreck – crying in the bathroom at work, sick to my stomach every
day. I remember explaining to
David at one point that I felt like I was underwater. Or like there was this
thick curtain just kind of shrouding me. I knew that the real Caela was under there
somewhere, but I couldn’t quite seem to find her. It was like this giant gulf
separated me from the world around me. And though I tried really, really hard I
just couldn’t break free. I couldn’t find my way back to myself. It was the
worst feeling I’ve ever had in my life. And it was terrifying. It felt like I
was possessed by something I could not control.
I wonder if that’s how the man in the sanctuary in
Capernaum felt. We don’t know much about him. Just that he showed up for
worship that day and cried out because the spirit that possessed him made him
do so. I think it’s important to notice that Jesus does not condemn the man in
any way. Instead, he speaks directly to the spirit that possesses him. But
first, we are told that he rebukes the spirit. Only I’m not so sure that’s a
perfect translation. The Greek word there is epitimao and the primary definition of that word is to honor.
Rebuke or censure is more like the third one down on the list of definitions.
What if, instead of rebuking the spirit, Jesus honored it before telling it to come out
of the man and leave him alone? I feel like honoring those things that possess
us is a hugely important step in freeing ourselves. We all know that the first
step in any 12 Step Program, like Alcoholics Anonymous is to admit that there
is a problem. From the AA Big Book, “Step One: We admitted that we were
powerless over alcohol, that our lives had become unmanageable.”
That’s giving honor to the addiction. Taking it
seriously. I felt like I had to do that same thing when I was living with
depression. I had to get to the point where I could say, “You know, this is a
serious problem. Something is really not right and I want to figure out how I
can get some help.”
The first thing Jesus did was honor the spirit and
take it seriously. The next thing he did was tell it to come out of the man and
leave him alone.
Wouldn’t it be nice if it was that simple? If Jesus
was here with us in the room and could just tell our fears, our sense of
unworthiness, our obsession with consuming, our anger, our PTSD, our addition
to drugs, alcohol, food, praise, gambling, technology….wouldn’t it be great if
Jesus was here and could just tell all of that to go away and leave us alone?
I want to tell you something. I believe Jesus can
help. I don’t fully understand how, but I do believe that God has a way of
working through Jesus to free us from those things that possess us.
I think it absolutely makes sense to do all those
other good things, too – go to 12 step meetings, don’t miss them! Call your
sponsor every day. Get a great therapist – a great therapist can be the Word of
God incarnate, pushing you and supporting you in all of the best ways. Take
your medication – and don’t be ashamed. You wouldn’t be embarrassed about taking
antibiotics, right? Same goes with the medication you need for your mental
well-being. Eat right, exercise, sleep well, surround yourself with friends and
family who will listen to you, love you unconditionally, and pick you back up
off the floor when you fall down again and again.
AND, in the midst of all of those things, don’t
forget about Jesus. Because Jesus is a healer. There are too many stories of
Jesus healing for me to believe it could be any other way.
I think we can learn a lot from the way each gospel
writer begins their story. In Matthew, Jesus’s first public act is the Sermon
on the Mount. Jesus is the great teacher. In Luke, Jesus is the one come to set
the captives free, to proclaim liberty to the oppressed. He sides with those
who have been marginalized. In John, he begins his ministry with a miracle of
abundance. Turns water into wine at a wedding. He is the one who comes that we
might have life, and have it abundantly.
And in Mark? In Mark, Jesus’s first act is an
exorcism during worship. He is the one who has come to disrupt the world. He is
not afraid of conflict. He is ready to confront the powers that possess us,
head-on. He comes as one with authority. The authority to break the world wide
open, expose our deepest struggles and remind us that they do not define us.
He speaks directly to the spirit and tells it to
leave the man alone. He sees past the spirit, to the beloved child of God that
is there just below the façade. He speaks words of love, words of power, words
of encouragement, reminding us all who we are.
We are the beloved, with whom God is well-pleased.
And nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus – not
depression, not schizophrenia, not OCD, not eating disorders, not addiction in
all its varied and awful forms. We are more than the things that possess us.
We may be a little broken, yes, but we are being
made whole. With Christ’s help. Each and every day. Thanks be to God.
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