Suppose you decided to take a solo camping trip in a remote area. You needed to get away – don’t we all sometimes? Or you wanted to see another part of the country. Or you needed to test yourself. Suppose that you decided to walk the Appalachian Trail by yourself. The AT is 2200 miles long and runs from Springer Mountain in Georgia to Mt. Katahdin in Maine. People who commit to walking the entire trail, “through-hikers,” as they are called, usually start out at the southern end in late March or early April and reach Mt. Katahdin in late summer or early fall.
So suppose you decided to walk the AT by yourself. When would you go? Would you try to hike the whole trail or just a section? What would you take? Remember, you’d have to carry everything on your back. You’d need some shelter, a tent or lean-to perhaps, a sleeping back, stove, and light. Would you take food or count on buying what you needed along the trail? How about books or extra clothes? Would want a small MP3 player with your favorite music? What about batteries? As your backpack starts to get heavy, would you begin to wonder, “What’s really essential?” Would seeing a bear or a bobcat make you leave the trail? Could you handle the silence? Would you use all that time to think about the choices you’d made in your life? Would God be more present to you along the trail than at home?
Did Jesus face some of these questions on his own solo camping trip? As if Jesus were a unique and mysterious person, the writer of the Gospel of Mark provides few details about Jesus’ decision to go off into the hills of Judea or of his experiences over the weeks he spent walking those hills. Jesus had already had two powerful spiritual experiences. He had followed the Spirit’s urging and sought John’s baptism. He had plunged into the Jordan River along with all those from Jerusalem who were there confessing their sins. Coming up from the water, he had felt deeply God’s affirmation of him, and he knew himself to be connected to God in a new and different way. Was his whole life about to change? He had scarcely climbed up the river bank and changed into his dry clothes when the Spirit, now not a gentle nudge in his ear or a dove on his shoulder, but an arm of surprising strength, gripped him and led him up into the bleak hills.
Did Jesus know how long he would stay out in the hills? Did he have time to pack a kit bag or a backpack, to decide what to take with him? Did he have a blanket to wrap around himself during the chilly Judean nights? Did he take a cloak or second tunic? A knife? A lantern? Did he eat wild roots or leaves? Perhaps there were wild apples or other fruit up there. What did Jesus do when he met a wild animal? Did he see it as a threat, or as a creature that also shared God’s life? What did he think about, pray about, or wonder about, during those long, silent hours? Perhaps he knew himself to be in a “thin” place, where the veil between earth and heaven gives way, and deeper communion with the Holy One becomes possible. Did his heightened sense of nearness to God clarify God’s call to him? Did he understand that a ministry of preaching God’s good news, teaching, and healing would be bitterly opposed by the religious and political authorities and would ultimately lead to his death? How did Jesus know when to come back down? Was he ready for the arduous labor that now lay ahead of him? Did the Spirit warn Jesus that the political leaders who had had John arrested were after him as well, and that he should begin his ministry in Galilee instead Judea?
Jesus was not the only one in Scripture to feel the powerful grip of the Holy Spirit. After Samuel had identified David, the youngest of Jesse’s eight sons, as the next king of Israel, Scripture tells us that, “the spirit of the Lord came mightily upon David from that day forward” (1Samuel 16:13). As the exiles began to return to Jerusalem, the prophet Isaiah knew that, “The spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me…. 61:1). At the beginning of his ministry in the Gospel of Luke, Jesus would apply that very declaration of Isaiah to himself. Other prophets report encountering God in desolate places, in deserts, and in mountains.
Throughout the centuries, serious followers of Jesus have sought out mountains and deserts, or have been driven into them by the Holy Spirit, in order to experience God’s presence more deeply. Beginning as early as the third century AD, holy men and women left behind the temptations and rich life of Egyptian cities. They settled in small desert communities and lived simple lives, dedicated to contemplative prayer, charity, and forgiveness. As they wrestled with God, they wrote about their experiences, hoping to share their insights with their followers. The sayings of the Desert Fathers and Mothers, as they are now known, are rich source of spiritual wisdom to this day. Following his vision of Jesus in the country chapel of San Damiano, St. Francis renounced his identity as a prosperous cloth merchant’s son and lived as a beggar in the hills of Assisi. After much careful discernment, Teresa of Avila left the settled, relatively relaxed life of Carmelite nuns in 16th century Spain to found a new order that allowed for periods of silence and contemplation. Closer to our own day, Trappist monk Thomas Merton led us into the contemplative desert through his book The Wisdom of the Desert, while Belden Lane, Kathleen Norris, and Terry Tempest Williams recount their own experiences of being drawn by the Spirit into secluded places.
My friends, in Lent we too are invited to go on a solo camping trip, to venture into a spiritual wilderness. This year we were not able to confront once again our mortality, in the imposition of ashes. Nor did we hear the exhortation for Ash Wednesday. Nevertheless our work for this season, as the Book of Common Prayer reminds us, is to observe a holy Lent "by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and by reading and meditating on God’s holy Word.” For most of us, given our 24/7 overly busy lives, the only way to fulfill that charge is to let the Spirit drive us into the wilderness, to find some time and place apart where we may truly listen to the Spirit and discern God’s direction for our lives. What do you need for such a solo camping trip? Perhaps you need to commit to a definite time of prayer, perhaps first thing in the morning, over the noon hour, last thing at night, or on a quiet Saturday or Sunday afternoon. How many minutes will you give to God? Ten, twenty, thirty? You may need to commit to particular place, where you can pray without interruption for some brief period, a room where you can shut the door, or even a basement or attic. You might consider joining a quiet morning or day, where you may hear God in the silence of contemplative prayer. Do you need anything special? A book of Lenten devotions perhaps? A notebook or tablet for keeping a spiritual journal? Perhaps you can create your own “thin place” by lighting a candle, wearing a prayer shawl, or using Anglican prayer beads. Perhaps an icon, a window, or a painting will lead you into God’s silence. What else do you need to take with you? The support and help of family and friends, perhaps? What do you need to leave behind? Expectations of “what’s in it for me” or what the outcome of prayer should be? Can you let the Spirit work her will in you, giving you glimpses of God’s affirmation of you and leading you to a clearer sense of vocation?
If you let yourself be led by God’s Spirit, you may well be surprised. Perhaps even Jesus was surprised by what happened to him in the Judean hills. Perhaps he came down from the hills surer of his vocation, clearer about his role in God’s design, less fearful of what lay ahead, and more confident in God’s love for him. We too are invited into a process of transformation. When we return from our solo camping trip, our time apart with God, we too may find ourselves surer of God’s call to us, less fearful of what life may hold for us, less afraid of death, and more confident of God’s love for us.
Perhaps too we will be empowered for greater ministry. When Jesus’ retreat came to an end, the Spirit lured him from the silence of the hills to the noise of the needs of his people. Jesus went public with the message of God’s good news for all of humankind, indeed for all of creation. For us, too, time spent in the wilderness leads to transformation, to seeing ourselves and others in new ways, to understanding ourselves as members of God’s realm, and to sharing God’s healing and welcoming touch with others. As we sojourn more closely with Jesus, we understand that contemplation must always lead to outreach, introspection must always lead to action. Jesus has been there before us. Jesus is with us still, assuring us in the wilderness that we too will find divine refreshment and spiritual insight. God bless us all during this most holy season.
Sunday, February 22, 2015
Sunday, February 1, 2015
Be Silent and Come Out
“My ‘insanity’ messes with people’s lives…. It’s just the way it is.”1 Perhaps you too recoiled in horror from this statement. In an article in Friday’s Athens Messenger, convicted murderer and self-styled prophet Daniel Lafferty described his role in the suicides of Kristi and Benjamin Strack and their murder of their three children. Incarcerated in Utah for almost thirty years, Lafferty considers himself another Elijah, one who is charged with preparing the world for the second coming. Although he can only be visited behind a thick Plexiglass window in the Utah State Prison, Lafferty still has a few followers who accept his beliefs that the world is controlled by the devil, and that the apocalypse is near.
Tragically for her and her family, Kristi Strack came under Lafferty’s influence in 2003. After reading Jon Krakauer’s book Under the Banner of Heaven, which depicted Lafferty’s murder of his sister-in-law and fifteen-month old niece, Strack began visiting and writing to Lafferty in prison. Although it appears that her contact with him came to an end a few years ago, investigators believe that Lafferty’s beliefs continued to influence her. Tragically, his destructive view ultimately led her, her husband, and their children to down a lethal concoction of methadone and cold medicine. Although Lafferty believes that the Stracks are “in paradise now,” Rick Ross, executive director of the Cult Education Institute, considers Lafferty a dangerous cult leader – even from behind prison walls. “With Lafferty and those that pose as prophets,” said Ross, “they all created a kind of doomsday, a crisis mentality where people felt there was nothing in the world left to live for.”
Why do such “prophets” attract a following? What demons drive such prophets and their followers to such tragic self-destruction? Who can forget David Koresh? In April 1993, Koresh set afire his Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas and took the lives of seventy-five of his followers along with his own. How many of you remember Jim Jones, the cult leader who established “Jonestown” in northern Guyana? In November, 1978, after Jones’ followers murdered Congressman Leo Ryan, who had come on a fact-finding mission, 918 of Jones’ followers, including 276 children, died in his compound, of apparent cyanide poisoning. How about Fred Phelps, the late leader of the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka Kansas? His followers, mostly members of his extended family, have not, to my knowledge, committed suicide. However, his organization has spewed out hate messages and added to the grief of many families participating in military funerals. Most of you can think of other similarly destructive cult leaders whose stories have come to light.
We may never know what demons drive such cult leaders or their obviously mentally ill followers. But we do know this: as members of the Body of Christ, we do not follow a cult leader who leads us to grief and tragedy. We are called to follow a very different prophet and leader. We are called to follow a leader who accepts us, showers us with God’s love, actively demonstrates his care for those who are poor, marginalized, and oppressed, and continues to drive out the demons that threaten to destroy us and our world.
We are still in Epiphany tide, the time when the many facets of Jesus’ identity are made manifest. We have seen Jesus at his baptism, and we have heard God’s affirmation of him – and, by extension, of us. We have heard Jesus call Nathanael, promising him wonderful visions of Jesus in glory. With the command “metanoeite” ringing in our ears, we have heard Jesus call us to a change of life and his friends to partner with him in drawing us into his net of love. Now at the beginning of what some have called the “eventful day in Capernaum,” we are treated to yet another glimpse of Jesus’ identity.
Make no mistake: whatever the headings in your Bible are, the focus of our gospel reading for today is not a deranged man or his demonic spirit. This is a story about Jesus – and ultimately about God. Having travelled to Capernaum, a Roman outpost on the northern end of the Sea of Galilee, Jesus entered a synagogue, an assembly hall for pious Jews, and began to teach. He didn’t lead his hearers into demonic self-destructiveness or hatred, as did Jim Jones, David Koresh, or Fred Phelps. He didn’t interpret the Scriptures the way most everyone else did: by looking at the context, parsing the words, and consulting other scholars. This was what the Scribes did in Jesus’ day, what orthodox rabbis do to this day, and indeed what most scholars of Scripture continue to do.
Rather, Jesus taught “with authority.” He taught out of his own identity and understanding of Scripture. For Mark, Jesus was thus not one of many credible teachers. He was the one above all teachers of Scripture, the only one qualified to instruct and command us. He was the one who had fulfilled God’s promise articulated in Deuteronomy, in which God promised those in Exile that God would raise up a prophet like Moses, able to lead them into liberty and life. For Mark, Jesus was the one who ultimately spoke out of his own relationship with God the Creator, through God the Spirit.
Most important, for Mark, Jesus was the one who demonstrated his authority to teach, his status as one who spoke God’s word. But Jesus did not demonstrate his authority through special effects – or even a miracle. For Mark, because the reign of God had already come near in Jesus, the powers of evil and destruction were already defeated as Jesus began his ministry. In this scene, as scholar Eugene Boring reminds us, “There are no incantations, no magic words, no props, no ceremonials or rituals. It is important to see that there is no struggle. From the very first, Jesus stands before a defeated enemy.”2 And what did Jesus command, in order to demonstrate his godly power? He commanded the demonic spirit to “Be silent and come out of him.” Instead of bringing the forces of evil to life, as did the Joneses and Koreshes of this world, Jesus silenced them, by commanding them to muzzle themselves. Most important of all, after his death and resurrection, Jesus empowered his followers – and by extension all of us – to do the same: the follow him in announcing God’s reign and to silence and muzzle the forces of evil and hate among us.
“Be silent and come out of him.” Jesus still speaks with power and authority. He still commands our demons to be silent and come out. We may not always hear him, but he still commands those who incite us and lead us into war to be silent and leave us. Through those who speak his words, he still commands those who engage in acts of terror and those who harm and abuse the innocent to be silent and come out. He still commands those who traffic in women and children to be silent and cease their trade. He still commands those who look down on the mentally ill and blame the poor for their poverty to be silent and to work for change. And to those who rape and pillage the earth out of greed and with scarcely any regard for those who must follow them he thunders, “Stop lobbying and come out.” And as his followers we believe and hope that the demonic powers are already defeated, even if we cannot see Jesus’ victory over them.
“Be silent and come out of them.” Jesus still commands our own private demons – if we would but hear him. To all our negative self-judgments, all the messages of our consumerist culture that tell us that we are too fat, too thin, too short, too tall, too old, too young, too poor, of the wrong skin color or ethnicity, of the wrong sexual orientation, not sufficiently able-bodied, not educated enough, or not rich enough – to all these demonic voices, Jesus continues to call, “Be silent and come out.” To our busyness and 24/7 noise, Jesus commands, “Be silent.” To the demons who whisper that we can never please God, who tempt us to forget that God has searched us out and knows us, and who lead us to doubt God’s unconditional love for us all, Jesus shouts, “Be silent and come out.” And over and over, Jesus calls us saying, “Stay awhile in prayer. Be silent. Listen for my words of love.”
Just as Jesus transmitted his power and authority to his disciples after his resurrection, so too does he transmit them to us, who are now members of his Body. As we are nourished by him in the Eucharist, in word and sacrament, in speech and action, we are commanded to go out and share his message with others. We are commanded to say to the demons of hate and self-hatred, “Be silent and come out. Accept and share God’s love, for the reign of God has indeed come near to us.”
1. The Associated Press, “Killer says his ideas influenced Utah family suicide,” Athens Messenger, January 30, 2015, p.2.
2. M.Eugene Boring, Mark: A Commentary (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2006), 65, quoted in Gary W. Charles, “Homiletical Perspective,” in Cynthia A. Jarvis and Elizabeth Johnson, eds. Feasting on the Gospels Mark (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2014), 35.
Tragically for her and her family, Kristi Strack came under Lafferty’s influence in 2003. After reading Jon Krakauer’s book Under the Banner of Heaven, which depicted Lafferty’s murder of his sister-in-law and fifteen-month old niece, Strack began visiting and writing to Lafferty in prison. Although it appears that her contact with him came to an end a few years ago, investigators believe that Lafferty’s beliefs continued to influence her. Tragically, his destructive view ultimately led her, her husband, and their children to down a lethal concoction of methadone and cold medicine. Although Lafferty believes that the Stracks are “in paradise now,” Rick Ross, executive director of the Cult Education Institute, considers Lafferty a dangerous cult leader – even from behind prison walls. “With Lafferty and those that pose as prophets,” said Ross, “they all created a kind of doomsday, a crisis mentality where people felt there was nothing in the world left to live for.”
Why do such “prophets” attract a following? What demons drive such prophets and their followers to such tragic self-destruction? Who can forget David Koresh? In April 1993, Koresh set afire his Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas and took the lives of seventy-five of his followers along with his own. How many of you remember Jim Jones, the cult leader who established “Jonestown” in northern Guyana? In November, 1978, after Jones’ followers murdered Congressman Leo Ryan, who had come on a fact-finding mission, 918 of Jones’ followers, including 276 children, died in his compound, of apparent cyanide poisoning. How about Fred Phelps, the late leader of the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka Kansas? His followers, mostly members of his extended family, have not, to my knowledge, committed suicide. However, his organization has spewed out hate messages and added to the grief of many families participating in military funerals. Most of you can think of other similarly destructive cult leaders whose stories have come to light.
We may never know what demons drive such cult leaders or their obviously mentally ill followers. But we do know this: as members of the Body of Christ, we do not follow a cult leader who leads us to grief and tragedy. We are called to follow a very different prophet and leader. We are called to follow a leader who accepts us, showers us with God’s love, actively demonstrates his care for those who are poor, marginalized, and oppressed, and continues to drive out the demons that threaten to destroy us and our world.
We are still in Epiphany tide, the time when the many facets of Jesus’ identity are made manifest. We have seen Jesus at his baptism, and we have heard God’s affirmation of him – and, by extension, of us. We have heard Jesus call Nathanael, promising him wonderful visions of Jesus in glory. With the command “metanoeite” ringing in our ears, we have heard Jesus call us to a change of life and his friends to partner with him in drawing us into his net of love. Now at the beginning of what some have called the “eventful day in Capernaum,” we are treated to yet another glimpse of Jesus’ identity.
Make no mistake: whatever the headings in your Bible are, the focus of our gospel reading for today is not a deranged man or his demonic spirit. This is a story about Jesus – and ultimately about God. Having travelled to Capernaum, a Roman outpost on the northern end of the Sea of Galilee, Jesus entered a synagogue, an assembly hall for pious Jews, and began to teach. He didn’t lead his hearers into demonic self-destructiveness or hatred, as did Jim Jones, David Koresh, or Fred Phelps. He didn’t interpret the Scriptures the way most everyone else did: by looking at the context, parsing the words, and consulting other scholars. This was what the Scribes did in Jesus’ day, what orthodox rabbis do to this day, and indeed what most scholars of Scripture continue to do.
Rather, Jesus taught “with authority.” He taught out of his own identity and understanding of Scripture. For Mark, Jesus was thus not one of many credible teachers. He was the one above all teachers of Scripture, the only one qualified to instruct and command us. He was the one who had fulfilled God’s promise articulated in Deuteronomy, in which God promised those in Exile that God would raise up a prophet like Moses, able to lead them into liberty and life. For Mark, Jesus was the one who ultimately spoke out of his own relationship with God the Creator, through God the Spirit.
Most important, for Mark, Jesus was the one who demonstrated his authority to teach, his status as one who spoke God’s word. But Jesus did not demonstrate his authority through special effects – or even a miracle. For Mark, because the reign of God had already come near in Jesus, the powers of evil and destruction were already defeated as Jesus began his ministry. In this scene, as scholar Eugene Boring reminds us, “There are no incantations, no magic words, no props, no ceremonials or rituals. It is important to see that there is no struggle. From the very first, Jesus stands before a defeated enemy.”2 And what did Jesus command, in order to demonstrate his godly power? He commanded the demonic spirit to “Be silent and come out of him.” Instead of bringing the forces of evil to life, as did the Joneses and Koreshes of this world, Jesus silenced them, by commanding them to muzzle themselves. Most important of all, after his death and resurrection, Jesus empowered his followers – and by extension all of us – to do the same: the follow him in announcing God’s reign and to silence and muzzle the forces of evil and hate among us.
“Be silent and come out of him.” Jesus still speaks with power and authority. He still commands our demons to be silent and come out. We may not always hear him, but he still commands those who incite us and lead us into war to be silent and leave us. Through those who speak his words, he still commands those who engage in acts of terror and those who harm and abuse the innocent to be silent and come out. He still commands those who traffic in women and children to be silent and cease their trade. He still commands those who look down on the mentally ill and blame the poor for their poverty to be silent and to work for change. And to those who rape and pillage the earth out of greed and with scarcely any regard for those who must follow them he thunders, “Stop lobbying and come out.” And as his followers we believe and hope that the demonic powers are already defeated, even if we cannot see Jesus’ victory over them.
“Be silent and come out of them.” Jesus still commands our own private demons – if we would but hear him. To all our negative self-judgments, all the messages of our consumerist culture that tell us that we are too fat, too thin, too short, too tall, too old, too young, too poor, of the wrong skin color or ethnicity, of the wrong sexual orientation, not sufficiently able-bodied, not educated enough, or not rich enough – to all these demonic voices, Jesus continues to call, “Be silent and come out.” To our busyness and 24/7 noise, Jesus commands, “Be silent.” To the demons who whisper that we can never please God, who tempt us to forget that God has searched us out and knows us, and who lead us to doubt God’s unconditional love for us all, Jesus shouts, “Be silent and come out.” And over and over, Jesus calls us saying, “Stay awhile in prayer. Be silent. Listen for my words of love.”
Just as Jesus transmitted his power and authority to his disciples after his resurrection, so too does he transmit them to us, who are now members of his Body. As we are nourished by him in the Eucharist, in word and sacrament, in speech and action, we are commanded to go out and share his message with others. We are commanded to say to the demons of hate and self-hatred, “Be silent and come out. Accept and share God’s love, for the reign of God has indeed come near to us.”
1. The Associated Press, “Killer says his ideas influenced Utah family suicide,” Athens Messenger, January 30, 2015, p.2.
2. M.Eugene Boring, Mark: A Commentary (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2006), 65, quoted in Gary W. Charles, “Homiletical Perspective,” in Cynthia A. Jarvis and Elizabeth Johnson, eds. Feasting on the Gospels Mark (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2014), 35.
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