Sunday, January 28, 2024… Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany
“Who Do We Think We Are?”
Psalm 111; Deuteronomy 18:15-20; 1 Corinthians 8:1-13; Mark 1:21-28
Order of Holy Matins
Hymns: #388 “Go Tell It on the Mountain”; #394 “Songs of Thankfulness and Praise”; #396 “Arise and Shine in Splendor”; #409 “Hail, O Source of Every Blessing”
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace, mercy, and peace to you, from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus.
Who do you people think you are? You Christians, you church people, you holier-than-thou’s? What right do you have to tell the whole world what’s right or wrong, or good or bad, or to stand in judgment on what other people do? You haters! You bigots! You homophobes! You transphobes! You racists! How stuck up, how hateful, how intolerant you people are! What right do you have to shove God down other people’s throats? What right do you hypocrites have to judge anyone? Why should anyone listen to you?
They accused Jesus of the same things, and asked Him the same kinds of questions: “By what authority are You doing these things? Who do you think You are? Who does this man think He is, that He even forgives sins?” They even called Him the devil. Who do we think we are, Church? What gives us the right to say what we say and do what we do?
Who we are is followers of Jesus Christ. Who we are is sinners saved by His grace. Who we are is God’s forgiven children. We’re people who read and hear and listen to the words Jesus said, and read about all the wonderful things He did; and do our best to say what He says and do what He does. The word for that is “disciple.” This God-given Word, this wonderful Bible, is the only claim to authority we have. We’re not here to judge people. In fact, Jesus told us not to do that. All we can do is point out to people, as gently and kindly as possible, “This is what the Lord says.”
St. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15: “Since, then, we know what it is to fear the Lord, we try to persuade men.” “Persuade” is the operative word. No one has ever been pushed or shoved or nagged into heaven. No one has ever been brought to faith by being yelled at. No one has ever come to know Christ by being shunned or excluded, or by a
look down the nose. A smack upside the head with a Bible just isn’t the way to go (as tempting as that may sometimes be).
“Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up,” St. Paul says. Paul’s rule of thumb, in fact, is that every word that comes out of our mouths should be for the purpose of blessing or helping someone or building them up. The truth is hard to hear sometimes, that’s true. But even if we have to correct or confront someone with the truth about their sin, even those words should always be spoken in love. If what you’re about to say – or the way you’re about to say it – is going to tear someone down instead of building them up, it’s better to leave it unsaid.
Evangelism is never about pushing or shoving or nagging anyone; love doesn’t work that way. It’s more the art of gentle persuasion. Sinners that we are, sometimes we get it wrong. Sometimes we don’t resemble our Savior at all. If people have gotten the wrong idea about who we Christians are and what we’re all about, I hereby apologize in the name of the Christian Church to anyone who’s ever been hurt or offended or disappointed by us, or by anything I may have said or done.
So, disciples and followers of Christ that we are, we look to Him today to get it right. In our Gospel from St. Mark, Jesus and His disciples went to Capernaum, a little town on the north shore of the sea of Galilee, a familiar place, a place that was home for them. And when the Sabbath Day rolled around, they all went to Church. You and I are also “church people,” and going to church is what church people do, quaint and old-fashioned and out of style as it may look to the world. That’s what Jesus did, and that’s what we do; it’s part of our lives. As long as we’re living and able, Sunday will always find us here.
And then, in our Gospel, Jesus sat down in the synagogue and began to teach. What did He teach? What did He have to say? It wasn’t something new, but something old.
When Jesus first began to teach, “They handed Him the scroll of Isaiah, and He began to read.” What He had to tell the people wasn’t something brand-new, some new and contemporary take on theology. (Look out for any preacher who claims to have something new to say). Jesus said, “I do not speak on My own; I say only what the Father has given Me to say.”
We heard God say in our Old Testament reading: “A prophet who presumes to speak in my name anything I have not commanded him to say, or a prophet who speaks in the name of other gods, must be put to death." Oh, God, I have to be so
careful on a Sunday morning. I can’t bring you my own crazy ideas, or my opinions, or pet peeves. All I can tell you is, “This is what the Lord says.” Not that you’d literally stone me if I ever fail to do that -- but maybe you should.
Jesus opened the ancient scrolls, those good old Scriptures, and showed them the love of God. He taught them about keeping God’s laws, of course, necessary thing that that is; but He also taught them about God’s love, and about forgiveness and mercy and grace. When they asked Jesus what the most important commandment was, He answered, “The most important commandment is to love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your mind and all your soul and all your strength; and the second most important commandment is to love your neighbor as yourself.”
It’s that concept of grace that really throws people when it comes to Christianity.
People can understand the law well enough -- that there are Ten Commandments, and more besides, that God requires us to keep. Give me a list of rules to keep, and I can deal with that; I’ll check them off one by one. Give me a list of rules that other people are supposed to keep, better still. But grace? The idea that God loves us just because He loves us? That we don’t have to do anything first before He’ll love us? That’s an idea that’s hard to wrap your mind around. C.S. Lewis once said, “God doesn’t love us because we’re good; God wants to make us good because He loves us.”
Our Gospel says, “The people were amazed at His teaching, because He taught them as one who had authority, not as the teachers of the law.” At my church down in Kentucky, I had a weekly Bible study at a local nursing home. The regular group had one Lutheran (a member of my church), two Catholics, and eight or ten hard-shell Baptists. It was interesting, to say the least. The Baptist folks, most of them in their 80’s and 90’s, who’s been reading the Bible all their lives, were surprised and even shocked to hear about grace, like it was a brand-new concept to them (and maybe it was). Some of them liked it, and a few of them didn’t. One dear lady used to stand up and holler at me, ‘til the rest of the group would tell her to sit down and hush herself. Same with the group in the synagogue, same with the whole wide world. Some people hear the Good News and accept the word that can save them with grace and humility; and that’s a blessed thing when it happens. But others say, “Who do you think you are?”
The teachers of the law, the Scribes, were, well… law teachers. They had their long lists of do’s and don’ts, their thou shall’s and thou shalt nots. They’d warn you about the penalties for breaking the law, and what would happen to people who didn’t toe
the line. But grace? Love and mercy? A Father in heaven who loved His children? When Jesus taught that, they threw stones at Him.
Jesus, though, was the one and only Son of God. He taught the people with words of grace; but He also had all the divine power of heaven at His fingertips. He kept that power under wraps most of the time, “veiled in flesh”, as we say. But when the need was there, or the situation called for it, or it suited the Father’s purpose, He would put that holy power to use; never just to show off or get attention for Himself, but always with a reason.
Our Gospel says there was a man there in their synagogue, right there in church, who had an “evil spirit.” We have no idea what that evil spirit might have been, or what the nature of it was. It could have been what we normally think of when we think of demon possession, foaming and frothing at the mouth, all those things like they show in the movies. It also could have been anything from mental illness to a physical ailment to an ornery disposition. There’s no way to tell just what it was. The fact that the man was sitting there in worship on a Sabbath Day makes me think it was a secret something he was ordinarily good at hiding. Maybe Jesus walking in that day brought it all to the surface, like a boil coming to a head. But that’s just speculation… But the point is that Jesus has power over all such things, over all evil things and all evil spirits, whatever their nature might be; and He shows that here, to the congregation in that synagogue and to all of us gathered here today.
The evil spirit (or spirits, since there seems to have been more than one of them), cried out from the poor man, "’What do you want with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are--the Holy One of God!’ ‘Be quiet! said Jesus sternly. ‘Come out of him!’ And the evil spirit shook the man violently and came out of him with a shriek,” never to be seen or bother him again.
Who are we, Church? Can we do that? Do we have miracles at our fingertips? No, in ourselves, honestly we don’t. I often wish I did. I wish God had given me a magic wand, or a staff like Moses, so I could go bing-bing-bing and fix whatever might be hurting all you good people. (I must have been absent at Seminary the day they handed them out). But the reason we are who we are is because we know the One who can.
We do have the power of faith; we do have the power of prayer. We do have the power that comes from knowing and believing and trusting in a God who has promised to help us, whatever our situation or circumstances or needs may be. Jesus said, “Ask
Me for anything in My name, and I will do it.” Who do we think we are? I’ll freely admit I’m not much of anything all on my own – but I can tell you that my God is really something; come and see!
“The people were all so amazed that they asked each other, ‘What is this? A new teaching--and with authority! He even gives orders to evil spirits and they obey Him.’ News about Him spread quickly over the whole region of Galilee.” The people in the synagogue that day were amazed, astonished, astounded at the message Jesus brought them. It was a new teaching for them (although it wasn’t a new teaching, but an old teaching that had long been withheld and taken away from them). And it was a teaching with authority; that is, a teaching that works, one that’s doable, one that has real and solid hope in it. All they’d ever had before was rules they couldn’t live up to, and laws they couldn’t hope to keep; and what is that but a recipe for despair? This word of Jesus had authority because it had the power of love and grace behind it -- and because it wasn’t just words.
Jesus loved us so much, He was even willing to be raised up on a cross and die for us. We could never pray the price for our own sins, but Jesus paid the price for us with His own blood. And then God the Father brought us the greatest miracle of all, the miracle that freed us from sin and death and fear forever, on the morning that Jesus was raised up from the dead.
And that’s who we are, most of all; we’re resurrection people. We’ve been forgiven for our sins, and given new life in Baptism, and we feed on the body and blood of our Savior. We live in hope, and we die in hope, because we know we’re going to live forever. Who we are is people who have the gift of life and peace and eternity to offer to the world around us. Who we are is people who spread the Good News about Him, wherever we are and whenever we can, because we “can’t help speaking about what we’ve seen and heard.” My hope and prayer is that the world around us will be amazed by our words of love and grace, by our acts of love and mercy, and by the miracles that happen when God answers our prayers.
Lord Jesus, as You freed that man in the synagogue from the evil things that tormented Him, help us to speak the Good News about You in the world, that all the hurt and suffering we see in the world around us will be eased, and people will come to know You and be forgiven and saved and free. Lord, help us to be the people You have created us and called us to be. We pray in Your name; Amen.