Worship
for the Lord’s Day
January
31, 2021
A Note before we begin
this day’s worship:
As we continue to monitor our area’s virus positivity
rates, the sessions have chosen to remain on-line for now with the hopes of
re-opening within the next month or so.
We will keep you informed, as always.
Let’s begin:
Call to Worship
Almighty and most
merciful God, we give thanks that You know us and love us. Help us, through the power of Your Holy
Spirit, grow deeper, wider, and fuller in our knowledge and understanding of Your
ways. Help us, through the bestowal of Your
divine Wisdom, bring others closer to You and to Your Son, Jesus Christ our
Lord, in whose name we pray. AMEN.
Hymn O For a Thousand Tongues to Sing
Prayer of Confession
You, God, are known for
Your wonderful deeds— Your mercy, forgiveness, and love. You have shown us the power of Your works time
and time again. And yet, we are slow to
comprehend; we refuse to acknowledge Your gifts; we act self-sufficient, as if
we provide ourselves everything we need, when we know in our hearts that You
are the author of life. Forgive us, we
pray. As we confess our sins, in
thought, word or deed, may Your redemptive presence flood our lives that we may
praise Your name forevermore. AMEN
Words of Assurance
God offers redemption
to people of every generation, making new life possible for everyone. Repent, believe in the gospel, and be healed! AMEN
Affirmation of Faith – from A Brief Statement
of Faith.
We trust in Jesus
Christ, fully human, fully God.
Jesus proclaimed the
reign of God:
preaching good news to
the poor and release to the captives,
teaching by word and
deed and blessing children,
healing the sick and
binding up the brokenhearted,
eating with outcasts,
forgiving sinners,
and calling all to
repent and believe the gospel.
Unjustly condemned for
blasphemy and sedition,
Jesus was crucified,
suffering the depths of
human pain
and giving his life for
the sins of the world.
God raised this Jesus
from the dead,
vindicating his sinless
life,
breaking the power of
sin and evil,
delivering us from
death to life eternal.
With believers in every
time and place,
we rejoice that nothing
in life or in death
can separate us from
the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Glory be to the Father,
and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit.
Alleluia. Amen.
Pastoral Prayer
What have we done,
Lord? We want to praise You, so we
splash Your words on screens on a wall, with brightly colored and powerful
images. We shout Your praises, with
hands held on high. We teach and preach Your
word. But we don’t listen carefully for You.
We are so busy trying to shout above the
noise of the day, that we don’t take time to really listen and know You. The voices of the prophets spoke to people
long ago who were too busy and anxious to hear. Their words streamed in the winds of time and
have come to us. We need to pay
attention to Your message offered through them. You are our God, the God of all creation, the
God of power and love, whose mercy is offered to us. In Jesus’ time, He proclaimed the good news
through words and actions, reaching out to those who were troubled, alienated,
cast aside. He offered healing and hope
to those others turned away. Help us to
learn that You alone can heal us and fix those areas in our lives that are
wounded and twisted. Help us understand
that you alone can offer to us a new way of life through Jesus Christ. Remind us again that as we have spoken the
names of people and situations that concern us, praying for your healing touch,
that the same touch is offered to us in Jesus’ name. Lord, we need to let go of our control issues
and place our trust wholly in You.
Precious Lord, as we
have offered our prayers, let us also offer our lives, trusting in Your love
and call to us, responding with confidence…
Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, on earth
as it is in heaven. Give us this day our
daily bread. Forgive us our debts as we
forgive our debtors. And lead us not
into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. AMEN.
Hymn O Love That Will Not Let Me Go
Scripture Readings
Old Testament: Psalm
111
1Praise the Lord! I
will give thanks to the Lord with my whole heart, in the company of
the upright, in the congregation.
2Great are the works of
the Lord, studied by all who delight in them.
3Full of honor and majesty
is his work, and his righteousness endures forever.
4He has gained renown by
his wonderful deeds; the Lord is gracious and merciful.
5He provides food for
those who fear him; he is ever mindful of his covenant.
6He has shown his people
the power of his works, in giving them the heritage of the nations.
7The works of his hands
are faithful and just; all his precepts are trustworthy.
8They are established
forever and ever, to be performed with faithfulness and uprightness.
9He sent redemption to
his people; he has commanded his covenant forever. Holy and awesome is his
name.
10The fear of
the Lord is the beginning of wisdom; all those who practice it have a
good understanding. His praise endures forever.
New Testament: Mark 1:21-28
21They went to Capernaum;
and when the sabbath came, he entered the synagogue and taught. 22They
were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, and
not as the scribes. 23Just then there was in their synagogue a
man with an unclean spirit, 24and he cried out, “What have you
to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have
you come to destroy us? I know who you
are, the Holy One of God.” 25But Jesus rebuked him, saying,
“Be silent, and come out of him!” 26And the unclean spirit,
convulsing him and crying with a loud voice, came out of him. 27They
were all amazed, and they kept on asking one another, “What is this? A new teaching—with authority! He commands even the unclean spirits, and they
obey him.” 28At once his fame began to spread throughout the
surrounding region of Galilee.
Sermon –
(based
on Mark 1:21-28)
Today’s passage in Mark is one of
those passages that I don’t often preach on.
I find it quite daunting to preach about evil spirits and demons in any
kind of relatable context today. In
fact, the idea of evil spirits between the two testaments is very
different. In the Old Testament, evil or
unclean spirits are only mentioned sparingly – once in I Samuel when King Saul
is tormented by an evil spirit and once in 1 Kings when a lying spirit inhabits
the mouths of false prophets. In both
cases, these evil spirits were said to have been directly sent from God. Think about that for a moment – the Old
Testament says that these evil spirits were sent from God. There is only one other specific reference to
an evil spirit in the Old Testament which is in Zechariah 13:2; in which case,
God will punish all the false prophets and the unclean spirit and banish them
from the land. There are, however, a
number of indirect references to the warding off of evil spirits through the
use of talismans like the ringing of bells in Exodus or the sounding of the
horn in Exodus and Leviticus, the lighting of incense, smearing blood on the
doorposts, wearing the color blue or phylacteries in Numbers and
Deuteronomy. But most of these
references seem to have been practices adopted from earlier cultures and
beliefs outside of Judaism.
Something
shifted however, in the understanding of unclean spirits or demons in the
centuries between the Old and New Testament.
In Jesus’ day, the idea of evil, unclean spirits or demons seems rather
commonplace. In fact, there are 31
references to specific unclean spirits or demons and they take on individual or
collective personalities such as in our scripture reading today. Jesus talks to them directly.
Today
we rarely talk about evil spirits or demons that possess people. Instead, we talk about mental illness or
psychotic issues that torment people.
But, if scripture is to have a lesson for all of us in any age, over the
course of centuries, what is today’s lesson about this possession of the man
who had an unclean spirit within him?
Perhaps we could look at it in a different way.
There’s
a seen in Mrs. Doubtfire when Daniel, played by Robin Williams is backstage at
the production of a children’s show, simply moving and shipping out boxes,
having taken on a menial labor job in order to satisfy a court order for him to
secure employment so that he could have visitation rights for his
children. He’s made poor decisions, his
wife has kicked him out, and he has been declared unfit as a father. He’s watching this awfully boring taping of
an ‘out of touch’ children’s show, leans into the producer and says, “Ever wish
you could freeze frame a moment in your day, look at it, and say, “This is not
my life?”
How
about you? Maybe you’ve taken a moment
to look at your life and realized – this isn’t who I am or who you’ve wanted to
be. Or you’ve felt like a stranger in
your own skin because of the bad choices or wrong decisions you’ve made.
Rev
Michael Marsh, an Episcopalian priest, relates this story about the first time
he felt this way:
He
says that he was about five years old.
My mom and sister and I had gone to the five and ten store. There was a really cool little toy rocket
that I wanted. My mom did not buy it for
me. Now, a smart criminal would have
just kept it in his pocket, played with it when he got home, and hid it among
the other toys. Not me. As soon as I got in the car I reached in my
pocket and with much fake surprise said, “Oh Mom! Look what I just found in my pocket.” Mission control had a problem with this. She took me by the hand and we went back to
the store. I stood in front of the
manager crying. I gave him back the
rocket and told him I was sorry. And I
was so embarrassed and ashamed. I felt
so bad about myself and I never wanted to feel like that again.”
We’ve
all done bad things, haven’t we? We’ve
all had a moment of knowing we shouldn’t do it, but something tells us we can,
something whispers in our ear, “Do it!”
Afterward, we might say something like, “I don’t know what came over me,
the devil made me do it.” Right?
With a
little different interpretation, maybe, just maybe that is the same thing that
happened in our story from Mark. The
presence and teaching of Jesus filled the room.
He was teaching with authority and the room of parishioners was
transfixed. The man with the unclean
spirit who shows up at the synagogue is loud.
He interrupts the service. He
draws our attention. But Jesus’ presence
draws out the man. His authority and
teaching reveal a truth about all of the listeners’ lives, too.
This
man with the unclean spirit represents everyone who has ever experienced the
brokenness of life. He is the
spokesperson for all who feel disconnected from themselves, others, or from
God. He represents the human
condition. He blurts out to Christ,
“What do you have to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of
God.” But his question, I believe, is
the unspoken longing and hope that Jesus would answer, “Everything. I have everything to do with you.” Those are the words that can begin to put his
life back together.
We’re
not so different. Each of us also long
for that answer because we too know the separation and brokenness of our own
lives. We’ve lived in isolation. We’ve been trapped in grief. We’ve carried the burden of guilt. The truth of those situations often reveals
itself in the many personas or masks we wear.
At
some level we all project various images of how we want others to see us and
how we want to see ourselves. Sometimes
it’s as simple and seemingly silly, as saying, “I can’t go to the grocery store
looking like this. I have no make-up on
and my hair’s a mess.” Or we smile and
say, “Yes, everything is just fine,” and quickly change the subject when the
truth is, we are barely hanging on by a thread and not really sure how we’re
even going to get through the day. We
don’t want our life to be seen in its unmade-up condition.
We use
these masks to hide the truth of what our life is like and who we are. The tragedy is that they also hide who we
might become. It seems that those masks
most often arise from the many voices that live within us. They are the voices of condemnation and
guilt, the voices of grief and fear, the voices of anger and judgment. They are voices that keep us in constant
comparison and competition with others.
They are voices demanding perfection.
And those voices are never satisfied.
We are never able to do or be enough.
BUT, every single one of those voices is a false voice, an unclean
spirit or demon (if you will) that separate us from our authentic self, from
all that we love, and all who love us.
During
a long conversation with someone fairly recently, in reflection she asked me,
“What do I care so much about what other people say or think about me?” I thought about that question when I read
today’s passage. I thought about all
those false voices, about unclean spirits and demons, about separation and a
longing for acceptance and approval. All
of those things are contained in her question.
She could just as easily have asked, “What have you to do with me, Jesus
of Nazareth?” She could have been the
man in today’s story. But then so could
you. And so could I.
Deep
down we long for intimacy and authenticity but the last thing we want is to be
found out, to have someone see us for who we truly are and who we are not. So, we put on a good front, hoping that will
gain us the approval, acceptance, and love we seek.
We say
the right things, act, dress, and behave the right way, and all the while we
are creating ourselves in the image and likeness of the unclean spirit. The irony is that those fronts we put up,
those masks we wear, keep us from having the very things we think they will
gain for us; things like intimacy, love, acceptance, healing, forgiveness, and
authenticity. Those masks offer no
possibility for life to flourish and be abundant. But still we hold on to those false voices,
voices that collectively ask, “Have you come to destroy us?”
That
is exactly what Jesus came for. He came
to destroy. He came to silence those
false voices. He casts out all our
images, throws away our masks and makes us people with clean spirits. He has everything to do with us. He stands before us as the mirror image of
who we can become. There is no aspect of
our life about which he is no concerned.
He calls us into our true selves, the one made in the image and likeness
of God. He calls us back into the beauty
and wholeness of our original creation.
Today’s passage from Mark is as much about calling forth as it is about
casting out. They are two sides of the
same coin.
The
true voice and the true image are always present. That’s why the man with an unclean spirit can
cry out, “I know who you are, the Holy One of God.” He speaks from a deep place of knowing. His recognition of Jesus is at a profound
level, a recognition of himself and his own worthiness and holiness. For every voice that denies that and falsely
whispers in our ear, Jesus says, “Shhh.
Be quiet. That’s not who you
are. You are mine and I have everything
to do with you.” Listen to that voice
and you will be astounded at what can become of your life.
Thanks
be to God. AMEN.
Benediction
Jesus comes to us,
offering healing and hope, speaking and acting with authority. Listen to Him. Go into this world, confident in God’s love
and healing power. Go in peace and may
God’s love and peace always be with you.
AMEN.
