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.