How Witness to the World?

Sermon by James W. Crawford

February 2, 1997

Mark 1:21-28

How shall we Christians witness to the world? Where does our authority lie? How will people know we represent Jesus Christ? How will they receive us?

The authority, the legitimacy, the authenticity of Christian presence and witness lies at the heart of this lectionary passage, heard in churches all around the world today. In Mark's time, no less so than in ours, men and women sought peace with one another; they yearned for wholeness, for reconciliation. And they faced anything but. When Mark wrote his Gospel in 70 AD, the Romans had just crushed the Jews, laid Jerusalem in ruins, left the temple in a rubble heap, dispersed and disinherited them from land not acquired again until 1948. For Mark and his friends, then, the world was a wreck, with Roman imperialism in control, their people in dispersion, their religion in jeopardy.

Into this crisis-ridden condition Mark relates this pungent, incisive story of Jesus in that Capurnaum synagogue. For Mark it represents the first event in our Lord's ministry. It describes Jesus' decisive encounter with a troubled world. But Mark means it for us. In this dramatic story Mark reveals a glimpse of what integrity in our own witness may entail and the consequences our witness may contend with. We meet crisis here. We participate in a high stakes encounter.

Let's look at it for just a moment. You remember Jesus enters that synagogue and begins to teach. What he says we do not know. But my own suspicion tells me it has to do with the unconditional love of God for all people with insistence on special concerns for the powerless, the poor, the marginalized, the prisoner, the person from a different nation, of a different culture, speaking a different language. I believe his message focuses on the breaking of boundaries between nations and peoples, the dissolving of dividing lines between so-called religious professionals and their congregations; that it presents a picture of a world turned upside down, with titles, addresses, bank accounts dispersed, power and wealth redistributed, religious authority dissipated. Those listening to our Lord's discourse, those hearing for the first time that the status quo in God's name could be different in religious, civic and cultural institutions, those appropriating this picture of a new social order realize something fresh, something new, something world-changing bursting in upon them. They listen in astonishment. The words they hear create a new reality; they reflect design of a new community grounded in love and justice, radically different from the designs of their political and religious leaders, bearing release, anchored clearly in a Divine design for human life.

But word pictures just don't do it. They are not enough. Jesus' sermon cannot convey the dynamic, the depth and radiance of the new world he speaks about, the new order he represents. His hearers, astonished, barely grasp it. Then Mark presents us with the word become deed, the description become event, the sermon illustrated. From amid that astonished congregation comes a frightened shriek, a hostile scream, a brazen snarl: "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!"

The old order recognizes the new and hates it. The forces for evil recognize the presence of the good and seek to shout it down. The disunited powers seeking to fragment, diminish and demean human life gather their strength in face of the power of good they confront in the likes of Jesus.

And, friends, those forces, seeking to deceive, seduce and beguile us from courageous, compassionate and imaginative witness to the new social order represented by Jesus, those angry, fearful voices scream at us no less today than in Mark's own time.

Can't we hear them? Could it be these days the cry of unrestrained markets, the shouts of the religion of laissez-faire, the shrieks from the illusions of fairness in a Darwinian economy will be heard when the presence of Christ's new world confronts them? With all of the contempt and fury will we hear, "What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? What do you know of our world? Mind your own business. Our business belongs to us. And as for employment: human beings, their careers, their hopes, their vocations, their commitments, their loyalties can be dealt with like Kleenex, throwaways, their value the function of cost-benefit analysis. Cut the sentimentality, the romantic dreams, the rank impracticalities. Get back to your church. Get back to your prayers. Get back to your Bible. Go hide yourself in a sanctuary, but do not mess around with our bottom line."

My soul, haven't we heard the same fiendish cries throughout history? The slave shouts his hostility to Christ's new world. Those who wished to mitigate the terrors of child labor were bombed, subverted, denounced as enemies. Who can forget the furies set loose in cattle prods, snarling dogs, Billie clubs and murder as some years ago a non-violent civil rights project swept this country? Resistance to it remains to this day. Can you hear the violent hostility abroad in the land as Christ claims homosexuals for his own; the shrill resistance of commercial interests as they face the claims of human rights in China; the defiant pettifoggery, contempt and active recalcitrance of politicians in our country's highest offices to the urgent claims of justice, fairness, trust and truth in campaign finance reform? And I would suspect those who are call our attention to the promiscuous, life-threatening bonanza in the world's munitions and arms bazaar hear the vociferous resistance of the demons of economic and military power shout them down and perhaps threaten to deliver them to jail. This is the language of oppression everywhere, the blare of tyranny, the howl of individualism run amuck.

And that is but the half of it. We can never forget our Lord encounters this vicious attack in a place considered sacred. Mark makes clear to us by placing the story here, in the synagogue - in church - in church! - that we clergy types with our piety and pretensions to righteousness--scribes, if you will--we are no less jealous of privilege and prerogative, of power and influence, than those who conspire against Jesus and send him, in league with the civic authorities, to the Cross. Mark makes clear by placing his story in Church that all of us religious types, with our claims to beneficence and our convictions of truth, can resist the grace and goodness of God in our midst, shouting it down, casting it out. "....Would you destroy us, Jesus Christ, pathetic and ignorant Nazarene? We know who you are and with your name under our control, we will, if we can, co-opt you for our own ends." The Gospel, says Mark, brings tremendous and terrible resistance.

But Mark's story does not end there. He continues. Jesus, representing God's new world order, with a single command, exorcises that resistant, demonic power. Its silencing causes a violent shuddering and seizure, as radical change for Christ's sake always does. And the people of the synagogue--the church?--are once again astonished. The words describing God's new order in Jesus' teaching are now, in the healing of that demoniac, the words now become event, they become object lesson, illustrating the healing presence, making vivid the reconciling power of God's new world breaking into this broken old world of ours. It is Love's word become Love's work, Hope's word become Hope's deed confronting us in Mark's vivid, stunning story.

So, we ask our opening question again. How witness to our world? How will others know we represent Jesus Christ? Well, following Mark's story, in order to be believed in this world, we bind together our words and our deeds. We fuse our worship with our discipleship. We tie together our prayer and our witness. Yea, even this morning, as we leave this Holy Table and go on our way into God's world, we commit ourselves to uniting the risks of love we see and share in this sacrament to the deeds to be risked and shared in God's world.

Strong stuff, this Gospel from Mark. It begs us to witness in word and deed. It calls us to hope and, yes, invites us equally to service. Now friends, to the world, that is Christian witness!