Excision and

Mark 1: 21-28

One of the coolest Christmas gifts I received this last year was a

Smithsonian reproduction edition of the Jefferson . In 1820, Thomas

Jefferson completed this work, also known as The Life and Morals of of , by employing a razor and glue to painstakingly assemble selected sections from the into a careful compilation of the ethical teachings of Jesus.

Simply put, Jefferson removed Biblical passages describing the miraculous or the supernatural and retained passages containing life instruction, moral guidance, or Jesus’ teachings on discipleship. It was a fascinating task.

And in part, I can understand why Jefferson did it. He was heavily influenced by the scholarship of the Enlightenment, with its interest in science and rationality and reason and its clear suspicion of magic or miracle. Today’s lectionary text is one of the passages that Jefferson removed, and we must confess that the passage rings strangely upon the modern, post-Enlightenment ear.

1 Many of us, as moderns, find it difficult to speak, at least in literal terms, of unclean spirits or demonic possessions. Those seem more a product of a first century worldview, where the world was seen as governed by good and evil spirits, where a severe mental illness, for example, might be named a “ possession.” The rational or scientific mind struggles to come to grips with a man possessed by an “unclean .”

As a result, when this text has come up in the lectionary in previous years,

I’ve sort of skipped over it or stepped judiciously around it. I haven’t discarded it, like Jefferson, but I’ve done nearly the same by disregarding it.

So, I decided, this time, to wrestle with the text, to dig into it despite my natural hesitation regarding “unclean spirits” or demon possessions, and to see what I might wonder or what I might learn, through the study.

As I thought and studied, I arrived at a realization—even if I may not easily think in terms of supernatural unclean spirits or , there are certainly forces, understandings, actions or worldviews that I would readily describe as demonic: a word meaning extremely evil or cruel, diabolical, or unholy.

Racism, slavery, political or religious fanaticism, the holocaust, the subjugation of women, human trafficking, the plague of gun violence in our

2 nation—all of these might be described as demonic. They are unimaginable evils that are perniciously difficult to cast out—so perhaps I do believe in unclean spirits or demonic forces after all.

Further, I reflected, we readily and regularly demonize people—we take people with whom we disagree vehemently and we view them as entirely reprehensible, contemptible, irredeemable, deplorable—disposable. If we regularly treat people as evil or unclean, if we turn them into demons, as it were, then maybe the world IS, not supernaturally but quite naturally, filled with demons of our own making.

So—if I don’t believe in unclean spirits per se, but I do believe in demonic or evil forces and ideologies…and if I don’t believe in demons per se, but I do believe that we in fact turn people INTO demons, that is, we demonize them…well then, perhaps our passage for today is not to be so readily disregarded…how does Jesus respond when encountered with the unclean or the demonized?

In our scripture passage, Jesus is in the in teaching. The text tells us that Jesus taught them as one having authority,

3 not as one of the scribes. Now as an aside here, what Mark has done, with a single sentence, is that he has established both a contrast with and a conflict between Jesus and the scribes, or the established scholars of the

Jewish law.

I think I know a bit of the distinction that Mark is drawing…it is the difference, perhaps, between positional or external authority, and embodied or internal authority.

Positional authority comes from holding rank or power or an officially sanctioned office…military officers hold positional authority according to their rank, business professionals hold positional authority according to their title, congressional leaders gain increased positional authority according to their tenure in office. Similarly, the scribes command respect or esteem because of their office and because of their supposed expertise.

But there is a second type of authority—not related to position but related to…authenticity, integrity, gravitas…an embodied, internal, authority. In leadership, it has to do with not demanding a subordinate do something that you yourself would not do, it has to do with respecting yourself and

4 others, in a religious sense, I suppose, it has to do with practicing what one preaches, or embodying and living out fully what one .

The scribes, Mark wants us to recognize, have external or positional authority, but not integrity or internal authority. Jesus holds a larger, lived, embodied authority. He does not merely teach ABOUT the kingdom of heaven, he EMBODIES it, enacts it, and lives it out in the world. The scribes teach doctrine—Jesus lives redemption and renewal. It is not just a difference—it is ALL THE DIFFERENCE.

I make this observation at the outset, just to note that from the very beginning, as Jesus prepares to interact with the forces of the demonic or the demonized, he does so from a place of integrity. He is not SELF-

RIGHTEOUS, he is righteous.

It is from this place of wholeness, of integrity, of authority, that the entire encounter takes place.

The story continues….

Just then, Mark says, there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit.

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And the man with the unclean spirit cries 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.”

Here, it is interesting to me to ponder the question—who is us, in this interaction?

When the unclean spirit says, “Have you come to destroy us,” what might that mean?

Is “us” everybody, that is the Jewish people in general, is the question whether Jesus has come to destroy the Jewish way of life?

Or is “us” the current religious leadership or political structure—the system of authority and corruption that has been worked out between the Roman political elites and the Jewish religious elites?

Or is “us” referring to the community of unclean spirits, does the spirit fear that Jesus has come to destroy it and all that are like it?

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Or in an interesting thought that occurred to me, does “us” refer to the unclean spirit and the man in whom it resides? This concept intrigues me—because, stay with me, I suggest that an unclean spirit wants to take up residence in a person in such a way that the two are inseparable, like a parasite takes up residence in a host.

A parasite wants at all costs to remain connected with its host, to be one with its host. Disconnected from its host, a parasite cannot survive for long.

In this light, the Spirit might be saying, have you come to destroy me and my host, to destroy US?

And this is what intrigues me about that way of seeing the story: Jesus responds to the unclean spirit by keeping it intentionally separate from its host—the Spirit says have you come to destroy US? And Jesus says be quiet! Come out of HIM!

He sees and treats the man and the unclean spirit as separate entities.

That is a crucial distinction, because let me see if I can explain this. Recall that I spoke earlier of racism or racist attitudes, for example, as being a

7 demonic force. And what I tend to do with people who harbor racist views is that I demonize them—I make them into what they believe. They harbor racist views, they ARE a racist. I have just considered the host and the parasitic ideology as a single being.

And the problem is, a racist ideology is irredeemable—so if I make the person and their ideology as one, then that person is irredeemable, or demonized.

In this interaction, Jesus insists upon on holding the two separate, the unclean spirit is addressed separately, “Come out of him!” and the man is

HUMANIZED.

Now I realize that the point I am making may seem a bit esoteric, so let’s illustrate it concretely: Think of the movie Star Wars. In it you have a character, Darth Vader, who is the embodiment, or the of the Dark Side. He and it are one. He consistently says to Luke Skywalker,

“Give yourself to the Dark Side, as I have given myself to the dark side.”

8 Luke, in the movie insists, upon holding his father and Darth Vader as separate beings— “There is good in you, he insists, I know there is good in you, I can sense it.” Vader, in turn, insists “No, that person, who might once have existed, is gone.” The parasite and the host are a single entity, the evil force and the human person have become one, which makes

Vader, as a character, irredeemable.

But throughout, Luke holds Vader and the dark side of the force separately—and in the end, I know this is a spoiler alert but you’ve had since 1983 to see the movie—The dark side is overcome and Vader is redeemed.

So, take that image back to the interaction between Jesus and the man with the unclean spirit—the possessed man says, “Have you come to destroy US?” and Jesus says, holding the two separately, “YOU be silent and come out of him.” It is not so much an exorcism as an excision—that which is irredeemable is held separate and cut away, that which is redeemable, no longer demonized, is re-humanized.

And the reason that Jesus has the authority to do this is because he is not operating out of a set of rules or doctrines or some positional authority, he

9 is operating out of love, grace, forgiveness, mercy, compassion—integrity.

He is operating with the authority of the kingdom of heaven. The people, all who see, are astonished.

So, with all of that in view—what can we learn from this text? Well, as I said before, there are demonic, unclean spirts at work in our world, if not in a supernatural sense, then clearly in the sense that there are evil forces, attitudes, and understandings, and there are people who are entrapped ensnared and enslaved by them.

We are called to respond to them—but to do so out of the same grounding and that Jesus does—as his disciples, as those who embody and show his love. As long as we see the people and the views that possess them as one (a person who harbors racist attitudes is a racist), we demonize them and we treat them as irredeemable.

But if we hold them separate from their views—then the human and the demonic can be separated, and we can humanize them.

I have spoken before of Daryl Davis, an African American blues musician with a unique hobby. Davis collects KKK robes, given to him by now

10 former KKK members. It all began when Davis’ band was a frequent booking at a club in Maryland that was a hangout or a watering hole for local KKK members.

While regularly performing, Davis came to know some of the members, and instead of responding to them in fear or hatred or hurt, he began to get to know them, and he over time, befriended some of them.

Notice what he did—he held them and their ideology as separate, did not demonize them. He approached them in compassion and friendship— humanized them. And as a result, many of them could no longer be satisfactory hosts for a parasitic spirit of racism. They gave up the irredeemable, giving their robes to Davis—and in so doing they were redeemed, just as Luke Skywalker redeems Darth Vader, just as Jesus redeems the man with the unclean spirit.

I think what Jesus does in this interaction is precisely what we are called to do—instead of making demons of those who are possessed by or possessed of unholy or unclean views or spirits—we reach out to them, hold on to them, insist upon their humanity as separate from their

11 brokenness. And in so doing—they can be redeemed. Isn’t that what God has done with all of us? Thanks be to God. Amen.

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