January 26, 2006
Walk
Epiphany 4B Mk 1.21-28
“And the people were astonished at his teaching, for he taught them as one who had authority, and not as the scribes. And immediately there was… (in his audience) a man with an unclean spirit; and he cried out… ‘I know who you are…’”
There is a confounding ubiquity about spirit, a simultaneous and inclusive presence one simply cannot avoid, no matter where one turns or runs. Furthermore, one can never quite be sure whether that presence is good or bad, for spirit is inherently neutral, that is, until one engages it, embraces it, incarnates it. For it is then that the rubber meets the road.
One who has authority knows that reality intimately. For it is the very nature of authority to engage and elicit spirit, to inspire, and furthermore, to order it, shape it, and in the classic sense of the word, inform it. The daemons in Jesus’ world do us a great service, for they are often the first to know this about him. They already know it about us and in our blindness, frequently have their way with us. But they’ve met their match in Jesus — and ultimately in all those who truly serve God.
This marvelous little story in the early verses of Mark’s gospel illustrates his urgency in telling the Jesus saga by starting right off with the truly critical effect of Jesus’ presence. There’s no beating about the bushes here, and the rest is, in its way, downhill in the rush to climax.
The people in the synagogue are almost instantly “astonished at his teaching… (with) authority,” but they are only “amazed” and driven to murmuring among themselves. Whereas the “man with the unclean spirit” who was also there at worship (remember C S Lewis’s Wormwood at busy work in church in The Screwtape Letters?) knew instantly in abject fear of who confronted him and, I should hope, to his relief at the demise of his possessors.
Authority meets and elicits, draws forth the spirits of those it would lead and incorporates them in accomplishing their goals. Power commands, power overrides our spirit with its own. One need but recall the World War II leadership of a Churchill or a Roosevelt to discover a brilliant illustration of authority. And then to lay it over and against the dictators of the Axis to find the momentary clash and destructive results of authority when construed as power.
Authority reaches out of its own spirit into our spirits and enjoins us to its cause. Power manipulates our spirits and cripples them. One remembers the story of the lame man, lying by a pool at the Sheep Gate for decades waiting for someone to take him to the waters to be healed. When Jesus saw him there, he simply asked the man the obvious question, “Do you want to be healed?” (If so, then) “Rise, take up your pallet and walk” (Jn 5.1-9). Jesus met the man’s will, the weakened implement of his lagging spirit, and the man stood and walked.
Some confuse authority with power and construe teaching with manipulation. Authority, we often hear — and rightly so — is truly the critical turning point in the church’s current demise within itself. And strangely, the critics of the Episcopal Church’s use of its own ordered political authority, turn inevitably to the use of power and chastisement in their frustrated confusion over their own. It is no easy task to incorporate grace and justice into law. And yet that’s what any creative legal system must attempt. It is true of our American Constitution and its call for balancing powers to achieve authority. It is true of the way the church strives to be faithful to its commandment to love and to its commission to baptize and enlist disciples. It is true of any attempt to order holiness.
We are spiritual beings by virtue of God’s creating us. How we enlist that spirit determines the ultimate effect of our humanity. The daemons know that, for they are pure spirit, lurking to be incarnate in us, to move Jesus aside. Jesus simply asks us if we want to be healed, if we want to walk. Then he says simply, his words enriching our spirits, “Then get a life — and walk.”
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