Mark 1:21-28
January 30, 2000
Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the First Chinese Baptist Church of San Francisco.
Super Bowl
Today is Sunday, the Sabbath day of rest. But in a few hours, it will be time for war. This is Super Bowl Sunday, the high, holy day for whole legions of armchair athletes. Are you ready for the clash of the titans: the NFC Champions St. Louis Rams against the AFC Champions Tennessee Titans? These valiant warriors will be hitting, kicking, running, tackling, passing, catching, punting, and praising God.
Praising God? Yes, players and coaches are crediting God for touchdown catches and victories. As the teams meet in their locker rooms before the game, they ask God for safety and if it’s God’s will, favor their team to win. There’s a “holiness in the huddle.” As a New England Patriots’ fan, I remember Keith Byars would begin his post-game recap with “Thanks be to God from whom all blessings flow.” But Bill Parcells who used to coach the Patriots once said, “No disrespect to anyone, but it usually works better when the players are good and fast.”
Whether you are a believer or not, we can expect that some of the players on the winning team in today’s game will no doubt give God the glory. But this is nothing new, and not unique to the NFL. There have always been other clashes of the titans when the winners give God the credit.
Cosmic Battle
In today’s lesson from Mark, there is another huddle. It takes place in the synagogue in Capernaum where Jesus is giving a game plan for his players. As they break from the huddle and lines up, a possessed, ranting opponent jumps toward Jesus before the snap.
Getting right in Jesus’ face, he screeches, “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are,” he thundered, “the Holy One of God.”
It was time for cosmic war. Time for the clash of the titans.
Jesus rebukes the demon, saying, “Be silent, and come out of him!” And the unclean spirit, convulsing the man and crying with a loud voice, comes popping out like a fumbled football.
Jesus exudes such authority that even demons obey instantly. Jesus possesses such poise that even evil forces know that he is the Holy One of God. Jesus is so pumped up with such power that even unclean spirits know that his arrival on the playing field marks the
end of the Super Bowl for them, the end of their season of domination over men and women.
Jesus is Victorious
Before we get all caught up with Jesus’ successful play against demons, let’s look a little closer into Mark’s account of Jesus’ first significant act in ministry. Mark writes,
“They went to Capernaum; and when the sabbath came, he entered the synagogue
and taught. They were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having
authority, and not as the scribes.”
Unlike the scribes who taught based on rulings by citing past opinions, Jesus was teaching with a vision of the coming Kingdom of God. This was not the regular season, with many more games to play. This was the post-season. Jesus was powerfully announcing the arrival of the Kingdom of God. What is new about Jesus’ teaching is that it communicates the power of God. Jesus was authorized by God to call the key plays.
We can now understand why an exorcism is included to define Jesus’ teaching power. Any healing would have illustrated Jesus’ God-given authority, but an exorcism had additional symbolic force—a power like the NFC champions. One of the most cherished hopes associated with the coming of God’s rule was the expectation that the forces of evil would be rendered powerless.
The demon tries a self-defense play by naming and identifying Jesus, but in the center of the huddle, Jesus calls the play: a two-point conversion designed to give victory to this demented player. Point one: Be silent. Point two: Come out of him.
Jesus’ authoritative word silences and expels it. Not needing any other tactics like incantations of calling plays, material items like shoulder pads, and physical handling like crashing contacts, normally necessary for exorcism, the simple power of Jesus’ words won the game.
Two Point Conversion
This is a solid strategy for any player in any huddle, on or off the field. A conversion is a life-changing and game-winning event. Whether you are talking about that conversion which first crafts you into a committed disciple of Jesus Christ, or the conversion that later calls you to reorder your priorities, you probably need to do two things. First, be quiet—and listen to the authoritative voice of God. Second, “Come out of him”—that is, break free of the tackle, let go, get rid of something.
Jesus said to the demon, “Be quiet.” At today’s football game, you won’t be hearing any silence. The opposing fans will be yelling at the top of their voices to deaden the quarterback’s calling out the numbers before the hike. The command to us to be quiet and listen to God’s word is something we don’t do very well.
Author Kathleen Norris used to play a game with elementary-school children in which she would make a deal with them. “First you get to make noise,” she would bargain, “and then you’ll make silence.”
The time of noise was always predictable chaotic—shouting, pounding and stomping like a football team exploding out of a locker room. But the period of silence that followed was unexpectedly passionate and creative. When the children were asked to write about it, reflects Norris, “their images often had a depth and maturity that was unlike anything they wrote.”
One boy discovered that “Silence is a tree spreading its branches to the sun.”
One third-grader’s poem turned into a prayer, “Silence is spiders spinning their webs; it’s like a silkworm making its silk. Lord, help me to know when to be silent.”
And a little girl offered a gem of spiritual wisdom that Norris finds herself returning to when her life becomes too noisy and distracting: “Silence reminds me to take my soul with me wherever I go.”
When we follow the command of Jesus to be silent, we spread our branches to the sun and soak up the light of God’s love, forgiveness, and peace. When we hear God’s still small voice, we are like silkworms spinning the silk of a sanctified life. When we listen, instead of telling God all about what we are convinced we need to achieve—we rediscover that our most precious treasure is the God-breathed soul that each of us has from the beginning of life, a soul that we really should remember to take with us into all the splendid surprises of each day.
You won’t hear this kind of wisdom against the noisy commentaries on today’s Super Bowl game. Such insight requires us to be silent.
Once we rediscover silence, Jesus goes on to say, “Come out of him!”—break free of the tackles, let go, get rid of something. Something’s got to give if you’re going to get to where Jesus wants you to go. We too have unclean spirits that we need to get rid of.
The unclean spirit that has possessed this man can be one of a number of demons that possess our lives today. Some of us live with:
the craziness of guilt and shame
the despair of loneliness
the unrelenting competition and drivenness of climbing up the business
and social ladders
the hopelessness in the face of illness and death
the heartbreaking pain of a friend’s unfaithfulness
the confusion of being young and being old
the rage churning within an addict’s battle for control
When the man with the unclean spirit cried out, “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth?” these may not have been fighting words. They may be words to have pity on us because we are desperate. We all feel at times “demonized” by the trials of life and we are after a miracle of healing to help us to believe again. We want to see something before we can believe. But our answer to our desperate questions is just the opposite. When we learn to be silent, we can understand that believing is seeing. It is only when we believe in Jesus of Nazareth is when we begin to get rid of these demons and we can begin to see the miracles in life.
Jesus wants to confront the demons that possess us and cast them away. Do we need to look for miracles? Do you want to see before you can believe? You may choose to do so, but there’s already a miracle! The one miracle that under girds and gives meaning to all of life is the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ!
This one solitary miracle has made all the other miracles look pale against it. To believe that Jesus Christ is our Savior who died on the cross so that we may have life eternal is the only miracle we need to believe in. That’s why the demon came out of this man from hearing the word of Christ. The focus of this exorcism is not on the healing of the man with the demons as much as for us to focus on the authority and power of Jesus Christ. The word of Jesus Christ is powerful enough to cast out demons!
When we can listen to God’s voice, we hear the word of Jesus Christ casting out demons in our lives. We break away from these tackling demons that are holding us back from getting to Jesus at the end zone. Our lives are changed and we have a pure heart focused only on God. And this heart rejoices for God with unfailing commitment because God gave this heart to us in the first place. And against all unclean spirits or demons of disease and illness, this pure heart focusing on God remains strong and it won’t give up.
Last weekend, our Senior Highs went on retreat. Some of them will be sharing testimonies in a few minutes about how God is changing their lives. In the quietness of being away in the woods as they got rid of some of the distractions and din of busy lives, the word of Jesus Christ is powerful enough to cast out any fears, troubles, or problems in our lives.
When we are quiet, we can hear Jesus calling the demons in our lives to “Come out!”
We are like the “man with an unclean spirit.” When Jesus comes into our daily existence, will we say in rejecting and fighting words, “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth?” Or might we say with humility and desperation, “Jesus, you are the Holy One of God, why would you want to do anything with us who are full of demons?” The word of Jesus Christ is powerful enough to purify your heart. I pray that you will let the word of Christ cast away the demons in your life.
Church Huddle
Our church is like being in a huddle. And as I look at some of the amazing things that have happened to our church, I can see “holiness in our huddle.”
When your Retrofit Task Force huddles every Wednesday afternoon, the architects and contractors who are not necessarily Christian people would often turn to those of us representing you and ask “Will this decision strengthen your ministry?” There’s holiness in our weekly huddles.
When I see every Sunday, teachers gathering their students of children, youth, and adults and helping them open up their Bibles and reading such passages as Mark 1:21-28 and discovering that the word of Jesus is powerful enough to cast out the demons in our lives and in our world, there’s holiness in our classroom huddles.
When I walk around our beautiful Chinatown neighborhood after church and know that almost any restaurant that I might walk into, I would find our church people gathering around tables sharing life together and praying together. There’s holiness in our lunch huddles.
And when we come together like we have today for Christian worship
to sing how when our eyes have been opened to see Jesus,
to pray for silence and quiet in our lives to discern your word,
to become inspired and moved to know that all the demons and monsters and enemies that we have in our lives can be cast out, we are grateful to know that Jesus Christ is the Holy One of God in the whole world.
We don’t need Bill Parcells to tell us that winning is the only thing that matters. We don’t even need Keith Byars to tell us that all the blessings of winning come from God. We don’t have 60,000 people here like they will have in Atlanta today and no way is this Super Bowl XXXIV. But we too can do the “wave” because there’s a lot of holiness in our huddle!
Let us pray.
Dear gracious and saving God, we pray for your holy presence of silence and healing in our lives. Thank you for making our lives filled with your love and the fellowship that we have as your holy people. In the name of Jesus Christ we pray, Amen.