Astonishing Power

Dr. Jon Burnham preached this sermon from Mark 1:21-28
at St. John's Presbyterian Church on February 1, 2009 (OT4B)

Rev. Thomas G. Long is perhaps my favorite preacher and I thank him for the insight he has given me into our text for today. Long notes that some people are masters of understatement. They are able to communicate the size, power, or importance of something, not by flapping their arms wildly and loudly piling one hyperbolic adjective on top of another, but by the slight arch of a single eyebrow and the deft choice of a muted phrase. Masters of understatement.

There are, for example, people we know in the South who still describe the American Civil War, a war of immense destructiveness and tragic proportions, by pursing their lips and speaking of "the recent unpleasantness." Masters of understatement.

The Great Zacchini was, for many years, a feature attraction at countless carnivals and county fairs. He had one stunt, but it was a dramatic one. As the human cannonball, he would be shot from a cannon across a field and into a waiting net. The blast of the cannon would rattle windows for some distance and clouds of sulphurous smoke would drift across the astonished crowds. Near the end of his career, he was asked by a newspaper reporter how it felt to be shot from a cannon nearly every day of his adult life. The Great Zacchini squinted into the sun, scratched his chin, and replied, "Oh, it's about like anything else."

Some people are masters of understatement. Take, for example, the people who were there in the synagogue at Capernaum the day Jesus was the preacher. They made what surely must be one of the great understatements of all time. What happened, according to the Gospel of Mark, was that Jesus showed up at the synagogue on the Sabbath and preached an unusually powerful sermon. Rather than leaving the congregation bewildered by spending his time parsing Hebrew sentences, splitting theological hairs, and quoting fifteen other rabbis, each quoting someone else, Jesus simply looked them in the eye and preached from the heart. Mark tells us that the congregation was "astonished," but that's not the understatement. It was the congregation who made the understatement, and it came after what happened next.

Right at the end of Jesus' sermon, just as people were leaning over to whisper to each other that it would surely be nice to have preaching like that every week, the spell was broken by the appearance of a demon-possessed man squarely in the middle of the congregation. Where he came from, God only knew. Mark doesn't say. Mark just uses one of his favorite words: immediately. "Immediately there was in their synagogue," he says, "a man with an unclean spirit," which is Mark's way of sweeping his hand across the literary table, knocking off whatever was on there before and saying, "You think that was something; look at this!"

So the people couldn't waste too much time thinking about that good sermon, because they had an "immediately" on their hands, and, in this particular case, the "immediately" was a raving man in the middle of church shouting vague threats at the young preacher who had just done such a fine job with the sermon.

"I kno-o-o-w who you are," howled something deep within the man. "You're the H-o-o-o-l-y One of God."

"Shut up," said Jesus. "Come out of him!" Things were getting curiouser and curiouser that Sabbath day in Capernaum. The man fell to the synagogue floor, his arms beating wildly at the air, his legs thrashing out so that people moved back to give him a wide circle, froths of foam and strange cries coming out of his mouth. Then the man became strangely calm and lay very still. Slowly he picked himself up off the floor, his face now tranquil, his eyes clear, his voice measured and composed.
Now comes the understatement. The people in the congregation, having witnessed a scene to rival anything in The Exorcist, looked around at each other and said, "What is this? A new teaching!" A new teaching? If this had happened in any congregation I know, they may have sat for hours in stupified silence, they may have rushed to the altar in sudden repentance, or they may have leapt out of the church windows in terror, but the last thing they would have done was to comment on how this casting out of a demon constituted an innovation in Christian education. A new teaching? Indeed.

Perhaps what the folks at Capernaum said strikes us as incongruously understated because of the almost automatic connection we make between teaching and blandness. Ask the average person to picture a teacher and what will come to mind is a portrait of a rather plain woman with her hair pulled back into a bun, an apple on her desk, a sharpened number two pencil in her hand, and a pair of dark-framed spectacles creeping toward the end of her nose. Or maybe it will be an owlish man in a rumpled tweed jacket bringing traffic to a screeching halt as he obliviously crosses the street on a green light, his face buried in a book of Elizabethan sonnets.

Such images are stereotypes, of course, and those of us who are teachers ourselves complain about their inherent unfairness. But the fact is that most of us have spent enough time suffering through endless vocabulary drills, protracted exercises on factoring equations, and tedious lectures on the Code of Hammurabi to know that the word "teaching" is rarely dynamic enough, inspired enough, or exciting enough to embrace anything as overwhelmingly provocative as what happened that day in Capernaum. A new power, a new revelation, a new event, a new charisma perhaps ... but a new teaching? A masterpiece of understatement.

But even though their description of what happened in worship that day seems almost amusingly understated, the congregation at Capernaum may have been on target nonetheless. To call that dramatic event "a new teaching" may have been, when all is said and done, just the right phrase.

If the truth be known, we all hunger in our hearts for somebody to teach us something which will transform our lives by its power. We suffer from the separation of event and knowledge. We attend events, from basketball games to wedding showers, and leave amused but no wiser. We sit at the feet of teachers and gather knowledge, from the value of pi to the theories of economics, and we leave informed but unchanged. We yearn to be a part of an event which leads, not to diversion, but to wisdom. We long to know the truth which does not merely set us thinking, but sets us free.

And in the deepest sense possible, that was exactly what happened that day in the synagogue in Capernaum. An event of startling significance happened before the very eyes of the congregation. The demonic powers were subdued. A human life was restored. Jesus was shown to be Lord over all that seeks to spoil and destroy. And the congregation knew that this was not an event merely for the watching. They could not fold their bulletins after the benediction and walk away. This event was not a mere spectacle, but a lasting command. This event contained a truth which made a claim on their lives. Event and wisdom were bonded together that day. What is this? A new teaching!

Christians are always discovering that Jesus Christ is this kind of teacher. He acts powerfully in our lives, giving us overwhelming experiences of grace and love. But warm and exciting religious experience is not the totality of Jesus' impact on our lives. Every action of Christ brings truth, every experience of Christ forms wisdom in our hearts, every encounter carries an enduring claim upon us to live in new ways. Every time we sing "Amazing Grace" we can also sing "This is a new teaching!"

Since New Year's Day 1984, the family of Sam Todd has been looking for him in vain. A seminary student, Sam left a New Year's party in New York City, wandered off into the city streets, and disappeared. The family has been following every lead, tracing every clue. Their sad and futile search has led to hospitals, shelters for the homeless, and morgues. What would one expect the family to feel under these circumstances? Weary despair? Yes. "The irony is that you're hoping to find something terrible that would at least give the comfort of an explanation," said Sam's brother John. One might even expect to find some rugged hope, and that's there, too. But this is a family who has experienced Jesus Christ, and in that experience Jesus has been their teacher. They have learned from him that personal suffering joins us to the suffering of others, and so Sam's father has said:

We are a family of faith. We believe in a loving God who knows where Sam is. Sam is in his care, and we are, too. We live in a world where much more awful things happen all the time; where people living under autocratic governments have "disappeared" and we've known several of them personally. Sam's disappearance is an awful thing for us, but it's pretty mild compared to that, and this sometimes makes us feel humble. (From the New York Times, January 5, 1985. The account of Sam Todd's family first appeared in Thomas G. Long, "Homiletical Notes for Eastertide," Journal for Preachers, Vol. VIII, No. 3 (Easter, 1985) pp. 6-7. This material is used by permission.)

A family who has lost a son, but who is able, in that experience and through their faith in Jesus Christ, to have compassion on others who suffer. What is this? ... A new teaching!
---

Let's take a moment to reflect on what we have read and heard this morning and then we will continue with the service ... (Pause 30 seconds)

Loving God, in the silence of this moment, we take to heart your new teaching for us and for this congregation. Red and yellow black and white, Jesus said, "Let all God's children come to me." So we come to you this morning, asking you to show us hospitality by accepting us just as we are here today. We thank you for confronting our demons here this morning in this sanctuary and for casting out fear of the other who is red, yellow, black or white. Thank you for casting out the demon of fear from our minds and hearts. Give us a heart for you and for one another as we take to heart Jesus' new teaching ... to love one another as he has loved us. In Christ's strong name we pray. Amen.

---

I acknowledge my debt to my favorite preacher, Thomas G. Long, for this sermon which is taken from a sermon called An Understated Masterpiece published in Shepherds And Bathrobes by Thomas G. Long, CSS Publishing Co., Inc., 1987, 0-89536-869-2