January 30, 2000

Pastor David G. Mullen

Mark 1:21-28

Friday morning I heard Paul Harvey tell about how New York City is finding a remarkable way to get people off the welfare roles. They take select welfare recipients and train them to be on the Psychic Network. Yeah, you heard me right! The ex-welfare people are now making about $10 an hour listening to callers, reading Tarot Cards, and handing out advice. This clever scheme was working so well that New York planned on expanding the program until the news story broke and the whole thing ended up looking like a joke, or worse, a governmental scam.

Wasn’t it PT Barnum who said, "A sucker is born every minute." While it seems to be true that some people really do posses the gift of seeing into others and sensing future possibilities, the story shows you’d have to pretty naïve and gullible to believe that the Psychic Network mans the phone banks with nothing but certified psychics. But why turn to psychics at all?

Maybe we believe in the trickle down theory of God. Many seem to like the idea of some sort of magical power from beyond, at our beck and call, with just enough clout to help us enjoy our lives more, work better, or even bless us in our sin. We’re kind like those preservationists who tried their best to prevent the demolition of the elegant but old and outmoded Reno Mapes Hotel. (I think it was "imploded" this morning.) Let’s just keep trying to polish this, fix that, and maybe everything will be OK.

Religion safe, comforting, and yes, helpful. Here’s a quote from a church ad in the Saturday Bee: "Attend our Sunday Service and gain knowledge you can use to make life more satisfying." So is that what church is finally about? Go to church to gain a little insight, learn a way to improve a situation. It’s like what is said about the neurotic. No neurotic really wants the therapist to cure him. He just wants to find a way to make his neurosis work. He believes that no other life is possible and is willing to settle for a lifetime of low grade anxiety rather than confront the damage at the foundations of his life in order to enter into a totally new life.

In today’s gospel Mark wants us to catch the irony of the story of Jesus’ visit to the Capernaum synagogue. He wants us to see something quite striking: the synagogue folks–to all appearances righteous, godly men--had lost the power to recognize both the divine and the demonic. Jesus shows up among them preaching with hair-raising authority and yet they do not know who he really is. So they missed God. On the other side, there was in their midst, yes, right there in the synagogue with them, a man possessed by a demon. And they didn’t know that either, until Jesus showed up and the only one who knew who he was was the demon. I know who you are! You are God’s Holy One! Have you come to destroy us? Good question. Another might be, why is there an evil spirit there in the worshipping assembly?

The Bible is an archetypal narrative of the way God’s people in every age are constantly falling away from real obedience and love for the Holy One, eagerly settling into a kind of happy paganism. I say that’s pretty much what we have in modern America. Religion has become for millions a shopping mall experience in like happy pagans, seeker explore their inner selves and dabble in self-help wisdom and spiritualities. But what about God? A spiritual warm fuzzy is not the God of the Bible!

Just this week I was talking Pastor Glynn–the man who spoke to us during our Stewardship emphasis back in November 1998. His simple message, "Dare God," led many of us into a deeper level of faith in the power of God and the whole congregation has benefited. Anyway, I was talking with him about coming back here not only to address us again, but to speak to the Spring Assembly of the twenty some churches of the Sacramento Conference not about personal renewal, but about congregational and conference renewal. Seems to me as the Dean of the Conference that what I notice more than anything in my visits to churches and pastors is what can best be described as "a rising tide of apathy." As I described what I saw out here, Pastor Glynn remarked, Yes, so many churches seem to have everything except God.

Everything except God! Some commentators on the state of the church suggest that the main function of liturgy and worship and keeping people busy with programs seems to be to keep God at bay. They argue that we in fact fear the possibility of the Holy One actually interrupting our lives and challenging our plans. From Moses and his people cowering before the mountain of the Lord, to the town folks in Capernaum spooked by the authority of Christ, to Saul blinded by Christ’s light on the road to Damascus, to the frightening visions of the Lord God Almighty in the book of Revelation, one might say that the Bible suggests our fear is well placed, especially if we don’t want anything to change about ourselves or the church!

A burglar broke into a house one night. He shined his flashlight around, looking for valuables, and when he picked up a CD player to place into his sack, a strange, disembodied voice echoed from the dark saying, "Jesus is watching you." He nearly jumped out of his skin, clicked his flashlight off and froze. When he heard nothing more after a bit, he shook his head, promised himself a long vacation after his next big score, then clicked the flashlight back on

and began searching for more valuables. Just as he pulled the stereo out so that he could disconnect the wires, clear as a bell he heard, "Jesus is watching you." Totally rattled, he flicked his flashlight around frantically, looking for the source of the voice. Finally, in the corner of the room, his flashlight beam came to rest on a parrot. "Did you say that"? He hissed at the parrot.

"Yes," the parrot confessed, then squawked, "I'm just trying to warn you." The burglar relaxed. "Warn me, huh? Who do you think you are anyway?" "Moses," replied the parrot. "Moses?" the burglar laughed. "What kind of people would name a parrot Moses?" The parrot quickly answered, "The same kind of people that would name a Rottweiler, Jesus."

The truth is, when taken seriously, to some Jesus is a Savior, to others, something more like a Rottweiler. In fact, the ministry of Jesus has been often characterized this way: He came to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable. Any honest reading of the gospels–to say nothing of the rest of the Bible–will show us that when the Holy One of Israel shows up, those who mourn will be comforted and the persecutors will be cast out. The poor will be blessed and the rich sent away empty. The obsessed will be healed and evil will be silenced. The enslaved will be liberated and the powerful will be humiliated. And whoever longs for sweet justice will find hope, and the enraged rulers will breathe murder.

Having everything but God. As it was in Jesus’ day, so it has been through out the history of the Church, even to our day. Nothing makes us sicker than the absence of God, and nothing brings more life and health than God’s presence. Hope in the world, life in our churches, Balm in Gilead, is nothing other than the experience of the presence of the Living God, the Holy One of Israel.

May the Lord be with you. [And also with you! ] Amen.