Sermon

Mark 1:29-39

The Counter Gravity of God

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Mark 1:29-39

The Counter Gravity of God

The gospel we just heard
tells a spectacular story of healing.

First Jesus frees one woman
from what could have been a fatal fever.
Word of her recovery spreads rapidly
from person to person,
from house to house.

By nightfall,
every sick person in town
has been taken to him,
and every person in town–sick or well–
is now camping on the doorstep
of Peter’s house in Capernaum,
the place where Jesus is staying.

Jesus is undaunted by the crowd.
He heals plenty of people
and casts out demons from plenty of people.
All this is wonderful,
but the episode ends on an odd note,
namely that Jesus keeps those cast out demons
from speaking
“because they knew him.”
In other words,
he does not want them to identify him.
Although what Jesus does is spectacular,
he tries to keep it under wraps.
We’re left to wonder why.

If Jesus were interested only
in keeping demons silent about is work,
that would be one thing.
But on several other occasions,
Jesus attempts to silence people–
not demons–
about the mighty works that he does.
He seems insistent on avoiding publicity.
Again, we’re left to wonder why.
And we’re also left to wonder
just how he expects such marvels
to remain a secret.

For example,
after today’s gospel,
the very next episode related in Mark
recounts the healing by Jesus of someone suffering from leprosy.
Jesus asks the former leper to tell no one about the recovery.

But come on, now!
By moving from leper to former leper,
this person is not simply cured of a skin disease,
but leaves the margins of society for the mainstream.
Imagine this person
facing questions about what happened.
“When I saw you yesterday,
you were a leper,
now you are not;
what happened?”

Certainly this no longer afflicted person
would want to tell the wonderful story.
And tell the story the ex-leper does,
for scripture says, “he proclaimed it freely,”
so freely in fact
that Jesus can no longer travel openly;
he would be mobbed like a rock star.

So is that the reason
Jesus does not want publicity?
Is it an issue of crowd control,
maintaining privacy,
not getting trampled
by people eager for a cure?

This theme in the gospels,
known as the messianic secret,
is so significant
that crowd control
cannot begin to explain it.
Something more is happening here.

Jesus does not want to be identified
simply as someone who heals the sick
and casts out the demons destroying people’s lives.
That he does this is important–
a sign of the reign of God come near–
but it is not what is most important.
Jesus cannot be understood
unless his death is taken into account.
He cannot be understood
without factoring in
events that have not yet occurred.
For the moment,
it is better to treat him as an enigma.

One misunderstanding would limit Jesus
to an exorcist and healer.
An even greater misunderstanding would be
to see him
raising up an army against the Roman occupation,
attempting to establish Israel as an empire
as it aspired to be under King David.
But while Jesus does function
as an exorcist and healer,
he never engages in violence.
Instead, he choose the way of nonviolent resistance,
an alternative that continues to challenge his followers
even today.

The identity and ministry of Jesus
cannot be understood
apart from his death.
But his death is no peaceful one.
He undergoes a death torturous, shameful, and unjust.
It is a sacrificial death;
he walks into it willingly,
though he would prefer to have this cup pass him by
if the Father would allow it.

So Jesus resists being trumpeted
as the messiah of his people
apart from his suffering and death.
The crown of thorns
must be part of his regalia;
the cross must be his throne.
Anything less would be not simply incomplete,
but a succumbing to temptation.

The gospel story starts
with spectacular healing,
but runs on
through the bitter passion week to the burial
and from the sabbath garden scene
to the women who arrive the next morning,
only to flee from the tomb,
gripped by terror and amazement
because there in the garden
an angel announces to them
that Jesus is gone;
he has been raised.

Here what is true of Christ
holds true also of the Christian.
Our lives make no sense
apart from our own death and resurrection.
Our stories are not complete
this side of the grave and glory.
We start to understand them
only when we see what happens to us
as part of a story far grander:
the passion and the exaltation of Christ.

In our baptism
we die on the cross with Christ
and we are buried along with him,
and from the grave we rise with him.
Then all our subsequent dying,
incidents both large and small,
happen under the emblem of the cross
and culminate in our last death,
our bodily expiration,
and our final and glorious resurrection.
The dying and the rising beforehand
serve as our rehearsal
for this final death and the life it brings to birth.

There is a messianic secret:
no Christ without dying and rising.
There is another secret also,
that dying and rising define us as Christians,
and that for all this motion during earthly life,
back and forth from the grave to the light,
we are never dropped by the hands of God.

In his preaching at Riverside Church in New York City,
William Sloane Coffin distinguished more than once
between protection and support.
God does not always provide protection.
Bad things happen.
The world can be a dangerous place.
But God always supports us.

We are lifted up from a thousand deaths here in life,
and we will be lifted up from the final one as well.
Indeed, we are lifted up already from that final one,
for if we belong to Christ,
and if Christ is risen from the dead–
if it was truth that shocked those women at the tomb–
then with him
we are raised as well
by the counter gravity of God,
that law which Christ published when he declared,
“And I, when I am lifted up from the earth
will draw everybody and everything
to myself.”

We must recognize that our existence
involves more than solving problems
and exercising power,
even though power and problems
occupy so much of our attention.
For repeatedly we encounter
the different forms of death,
and these deaths have no solution.
They are the problem past all problems.
But even these deaths can become the theatre
where power of a singular kind is exercised,
the power of resurrection,
which belongs to God alone.

This power appears against the face of death.
This power of an utterly singular kind
does not bring a solution,
but a surprise,
a rising from death,
a life that is new.

If you are searching,
then you may well want to look
in a place where your power is absent
and problems remain intractable,
yet you notice the smell of resurrection.