Sermon for September 7th, 2025

Mark 1:21-28

21 They went to Capernaum; and when the sabbath came, he entered the synagogue and taught. 22 They were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes. 23 Just then there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit, 24 and 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.” 25 But Jesus rebuked him, saying, “Be silent, and come out of him!” 26 And the unclean spirit, convulsing him and crying with a loud voice, came out of him. 27 They 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.” 28 At once his fame began to spread throughout the surrounding region of Galilee.

Miracles: Casting Out The Demon

In today's scripture passage, Jesus performs an exorcism. I have been part of exactly one exorcism in my life... sort of.

I was not the one performing the exorcism. I was not the one who was possessed. And I was also not a mere spectator. You might be thinking, "What other options are there, then?"

Well... A few weeks ago, I told you about my college English professor, Dr. Grady Walker, who was a mentor, a friend, and a father figure to me. I told you about his compassion and generosity, but not his sense of humor.

Normally, Dr. Walker was a very dignified sort of fellow—he almost always wore a three piece suit and spoke in elevated prose. But every now and then he would break character.

I don't remember what I was doing on this particular day, but I must have been acting pretty obnoxious—or in Dr. Walker's words, I was being a "caution."

He stopped me mid-sentence, and put his hand on my head, saying in the voice of a pentecostal preacher, "Lord we lift up to you this poor, tortured soul." And I thought, "Oh, how nice, he's praying for me." He wasn't. He continued, "In the name of Jesus, I command you Neal Locke, to come out of this demon! Neal Locke, you leave this poor helpless demon alone and don't you bother him anymore! Amen!"

Sometimes you're the one performing the exorcism, sometimes you're the one who's possessed, and I guess sometimes... you're the one getting kicked out.

The first miracle in our series this month on the Miracles of Jesus also happens to be the first miracle attributed to Jesus in the gospel of Mark, which most scholars believe was the first gospel to be written.

The gospel of John tells us that the wedding at Cana (where Jesus turns water into wine) is actually the first miracle performed by Jesus at the beginning of his ministry, and Dan Barr will be preaching on that miracle later this month.

But this miracle—the healing of a man with an unclean spirit is almost certainly the first "recorded" miracle of Jesus.

In the original Greek the phrase "unclean spirit" is πνεύματι ἀκαθάρτῳ (pneumati akatharto), literally a spirit that is a-cathartic. What is a non-cathartic spirit?

In modern English, the word catharsis (which comes from this same Greek root) is defined by Merriam-Webster's dictionary as the "elimination of a complex by bringing it to consciousness and affording it expression.

To put it in simpler terms, if you have a problem buried deep within you, the only way you can experience catharsis is to get the problem out in the open.

So one way to look at this miracle is that Jesus encounters a man who is troubled by deep psychological issues, (which the most advanced scientific terminology of his day tended to describe as a demonic possession), and by bringing this complex out into the open, by giving it expression, Jesus provides the man with catharsis, or healing.

I don't want to minimize the supernatural or "miraculous" aspect of what Jesus does here. Catharsis in psychological counseling takes time—weeks, months or even years. Jesus radically accelerates that process and brings his patient to a cathartic state with just two short commands: "Be silent" and "come out." That's pretty miraculous.

But... (and here's what I think is the key to understanding all of Jesus' miracles) the real miracle in this story is not the flashy thing on the surface that we are so quickly drawn to. It's not the exorcism.

In fact, exorcisms were pretty commonplace in Jesus' time—contemporary written sources tell of plenty of healers who wandered all over the Middle Eastern landscape performing healings and exorcisms.

This was more like a basic credential—if you claimed to be a messiah, you'd better be able to cast out demons, or no one would even take you seriously. Every would-be messiah can do at least that much.

So if not the exorcism, then what is the real miracle here? I'll get to that in a moment, but first I do want to focus for just a little while longer on the flashy part—the exorcism—because there are some things we can learn from, even if they aren't, in the end, quite so miraculous.

Verse 23: "Just then there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit." First let's take notice of the setting. All of this happens in the synagogue. In other words, it happens in church on Sunday morning, or at least the Jewish equivalent of that. And this isn't just some random person who happens to wander in some day: The grammatical construction of the Greek phrase "there was in their synagogue" implies that this is someone who was part of the congregation, a regular member.

Why is this important? Because too often we think of church as a place for good people...shiny, happy, perfect people who have their lives all figured out—and often we pretend to be those people when we're here. But we're not.

We come to this place (all of us) broken and carrying baggage. And that's okay. There's an old saying that the church is supposed to be a hospital for sinners, not a hotel for saints. Or to quote Jesus himself later in Mark, "Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; I have come to call not the righteous but sinners."

Moving on to verse 24: "and 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.'"

Notice that the one crying out here is the demon, not the demon-possessed man. That's an important distinction.

Sometimes it is our very brokenness and our suffering, our circumstances and our sorrow, that cry out to others long before we even have the voice to seek the help we need ourselves."

Jesus doesn't respond by saying "Just ignore that, everyone, it's the demon talking, not him." Likewise, in the church community we are called to listen carefully for those sometimes silent cries for help, to watch for the signs of need in our midst, and be ready to spring into action.

Verse 25a: "Jesus rebuked him, saying..." This sounds a little harsh in the NRSV translation. Why would you rebuke someone who is suffering from an illness that is likely beyond his ability to control?

Maybe Jesus is rebuking the demon, then. But that's problematic, too, because the word translated here as "rebuke" is the Greek word ἐπετίμησεν (epetimesen).

In most places where this word appears in the New Testament, it's actually translated as "honor." For obvious reasons, translators are reluctant to translate this verse as "And then Jesus honored the demon..." But I think there's a sense here that to honor someone or something is to give it the credence and respect it is due, to take it seriously.

When your doctor looks at X-rays or scans that indicate a potential cancer, you don't want him or her to be dismissive of the results (oh, it's probably nothing...you should be fine).

Nor do you want your doctor to fly off the deep end, sending everyone into a panic. No. You want your doctor to take the information seriously, and come to the right diagnosis. This is the sense in which Jesus "honors" (not rebukes) the man's illness. He immediately recognizes and speaks to the gravity of the situation. And what does he say?

Verse 25b: “Be silent, and come out of him!” In Greek this is just two words. Think, "Silence!" and "Stop!"

There's an old sketch from Mad TV where Bob Newhart plays a psychologist. Whenever someone comes into his office, they describe at great length all of their problems, and invariably, Bob Newhart's advice is the same. He looks them in the eye...and says... "Stop it!" Then he charges them five dollars.

As funny as that is to watch, it's probably better comedy than psychology or spirituality. We know we need to stop it. But we usually don't know how.

And that's where the other command of Jesus comes into focus: Be silent. In our manic, busy, over-scheduled lives, this is probably the hardest thing of all for us to do. We're afraid of silence. We're afraid to be still. We're afraid of all that might happen if we don't do all the things we think we're supposed to do for all the people we're supposed to do them for.

The voices of fear and ambition and anxiety and angst roil around inside our heads reaching a fevered pitch and we become like those driven by demons to do, to be, to have, to achieve, to make, to seem, to feel, to stretch, to run, to carry, to say, to appear, to please.

We might as well be possessed.

And Jesus says to us: Be silent. Stop. Be still, and know that I am God. At that command, even the winds and the waves obeyed him, as well as the troubled hearts and minds driven by demons inside.

Be silent. Be still. And know that I am God. We all might do well to heed those words more often.

I promised at the beginning to tell you what the real miracle is in this sermon. To find it, just look at the reaction from the people in the story. No one seems that impressed when Jesus heals the demon-posessed man. But they are amazed and astounded at something else entirely.

At the beginning of the passage, verse 22: "They were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes."

And again at the end, verse 27: "They 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.'"

They are amazed most at the teaching of Jesus, and they see this as the source and explanation of all the rest.

And this is where the truest miracles, the truest transformation begins to happen—not when we're running around like crazy chasing things just outside our reach. No. It's when we stop, when we make space and time in our lives to learn, to listen in the silence—to ourselves, to each other, and to the voice of the one who created the heavens, the earth, and everything in between.