Sunday January 28th, 2024 Worship

A few weeks ago, I shared a bit more about my call story and how I got here despite the fact that I was not planning to be a pastor. Often, the hardest part is getting to the point of acceptance of our call, well, that is until we have to go through the candidacy process. Because, in addition to the four years that I did formal Seminary training, candidates for ministry also have to go through a series of three essays and interviews. These occur within our first year of Seminary to make sure we are eligible to be a candidate in the first place, before we go on internship, and after we do our internship. This last interview and essay, approval as it’s known, is the one that ultimately declares us prepared for ordination in the ELCA. In addition to all of that, part of the process includes undergoing multiple psychological evaluations and a four-hour meeting with a psychologist to discuss the results and if we are psychologically cleared for ministry, so to speak.
All of this process is meant not just to prepare us for the challenges of ministry, but also to make sure that they are providing strong ministry candidates for the sake of the ELCA. It’s a protection for the churches in an effort to limit the harm that comes to congregations. The ELCA has a set of standards that they use to determine this, but I won’t stand here and say that the system is perfect. For years it was created to exclude certain people from the pulpit, and even though it has improved significantly in the last decade, the ELCA knows that it still has some work to do. Yet, it’s interesting to think about in relation to our readings for today, as we ponder what makes someone worthy of proclamation.
Underneath the different contextual layers, this is what our readings today are wrestling with too. Our first reading from Deuteronomy is talking about prophets that speak on God’s behalf, that also comes with the warning that false prophets will die. Lucky for me I haven’t been struck dead yet since “false prophet” is an insult a lot of people like to throw at me when they disagree with women or LGBTQIA+ folks being pastors. But, there is this level of importance placed on the one who is able to do this proclamation, as God notes about what will happen if people do not listen to the prophet. Even our second reading from 1 Corinthians addresses this a little bit in the sense that it talks about how knowledge of faith isn’t the same as loving God, and we have to be careful about how what we say and do affects others around us.
But, what is really interesting to me in all these readings is the Gospel. Here we have Jesus teaching, for the first time in Mark’s Gospel, on the Sabbath of all days. He has entered the synagogue, and the people were so completely focused on what he was saying when this “person with an unclean spirit” (Mark 1: 23) suddenly enters the synagogue. Not only was this an unexpected interruption, but I imagine this would be an unwanted person in the synagogue, based on this description of this person having an “unclean spirit,” as cleanliness was an important part of rituals and gatherings.
I did a little bit more digging into the Greek on this phrase this week because I was curious about the way we translate and understand it. Spirit, comes from the same word that we get Holy Spirit, breath, and wind from (pneuma). But, it could also be a reference to spirit beings or the power of evil spirits. I find it fascinating that these all come from the same word. And, as we look at this sense of unclean, it could also be translated as defiling, impure, or even later in Paul’s writings in reference to being without a relationship to God. So, when we talk about the unclean spirit here, what does it really mean?
Uncleanliness or something defiling would definitely want to be excluded from the synagogue for the cleanliness and purity of everyone else in attendance, yet this one who is unexpected and unwanted is the one to proclaim who Jesus is. ‘What do you want from us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are–the Holy One of God’ (Mark 1: 24). In Mark, there is a strong emphasis on keeping Jesus’ identity a secret, so of course Jesus would want to banish this spirit that is running around telling everyone who he is, but in doing so, it also gets the crowd to keep talking about him more. Because now not only was he an authoritative and captivating speaker, but he also proved that he could cast out spirits. But I still think about how it was the one deemed least worthy in this space who was the one to proclaim who Jesus is, to truly know who he was. It came from the person that wasn’t even invited or welcomed into the space to begin with; the one demonized by society.
This piece was what was really sticking with me today, as I have been reading the book My Body is Not a Prayer Request: Disability Justice in the Church by Amy Kenny. It has been an eye-opening book about the ways that the church has neglected or caused harm to the disabled community, and why we are called to remedy that as Christians who believe that everyone bears the image of God. It is this lens that I had in mind this week as I was dwelling in our Gospel reading, especially with how we view this one who enters into the Synagogue while Jesus is teaching.
This section of Scripture is often given the title “Healing of the One with the Unclean Spirit.” But, I think we miss out on a lot if this is the only way we view this story. Beyond just being a story about casting out demons, this Gospel reading begins to break down our strict sense of control surrounding who gets to know about and make proclamations about God. While I’m sure that today we would put another stigmatizing label on this person, we would also dismiss what they have to say about God. I understand that our church has precautions in place around who is given the authority to be a deacon or pastor for the sake of the church, but I also wonder how many people have been dismissed as false prophets or haven’t even been listened to because they did not meet our ideas of who should be making those proclamations.
What happens if instead of viewing this reading as strictly a story about Jesus casting out a demon, we explore what it means for these proclamations about God to come from unexpected people and places? How might we gain a better understanding of what God is up to in the world if we expand whose voices we are willing to listen to? That we see this story as one of communal healing, instead of just individual curing. It’s hard to say whether people would have still gone around sharing what they heard this Jesus guy talking about, but this encounter with the person with the “unclean spirit” is what really precipitates the spread of the news about Jesus. So, perhaps we have been missing the proclamations of others who have been deemed unworthy too. Because everyone bears the image of God and is deemed worthy in the eyes of God, so maybe we might just learn something else through each other’s proclamations too. Because, ultimately it is not up to us to decide who God chooses to work through for the sake of the world, as much as we might like to control that. May we pay attention to hear the voices around us that continue to tell us who Jesus is.