It really makes me wish that Mark wasn’t in such a hurry to tell this good news message. I wonder what Jesus said. I’d like to have the manuscript at least if not the CD. It’s obvious to me from the various recordings of Jesus’ teaching in scripture that he was a powerful speaker who cut to the quick of any situation that he addressed.

But it’s easy to see what distracted Mark’s telling of the story. Someone jumps up in the middle of the meeting, and disrupts the flow of Jesus’ teaching with a horrible accusation. “What business do you have here with us, Jesus? Nazarene! I know what you’re up to! You’re the Holy One of God, and you’ve come to destroy us!”

Every once in a while my husband threatens to interrupt one of my sermons with a provocative question. Some day he may actually have the guts to do it. But this guy… this guy has blown “decently and in order” out the window! We don’t expect something like this to ever happen in church of all places. We expect respect, dignity, and order. We don’t expect demonic outbursts. Sure there are times in a committee meeting or other church event when someone says something that comes off as offensive or says something they themselves regret. But this is an outburst of sheer disgust, the likes of which we rarely see in polite company.

What is remarkable about this exchange though is Jesus’ response. Jesus shuts him up, and fast. There’s no coddling this person’s emotional instability, no second-guessing which crisis team would make the most appropriate response, and no anger or tears that would suggest that Jesus took the affront personally. Jesus recognizes the demon for what it is, and says directly to it, “Quiet! Get out of him.”

In general, we orderly Presbyterians would like to write off passages like this as not our type. They are the kind of texts that we’d prefer to think no longer have meaning in today’s world. They are the kind used by those “other” churches that archaically still cast out demons in the name of “Jeeee-sus.” We can’t imagine someone thrashing around in our aisles while a demon disentangles itself from his or her soul. It just isn’t right!

And yet, we do proclaim to take scripture seriously and with authority in our lives. Have we written off this passage too soon? Have we failed to be accountable to the power of the Spirit to release us from the bondage of demonic forces acting on our own lives? Has our own teaching become irrelevant and our preaching of the gospel too wimpy to make any real difference in people’s lives? According to Mark, this event happened early in Jesus’ ministry, and as soon as it did, people flocked to Jesus in droves. The whole city lined up at his door that very night. Jesus took the time way after hours to cure their sick bodies and release them from tormented spirits.

So,…we’re Christians. Where’s the line going out our door? My suspicion is that we are more afraid of letting loose this type of power in the church than we are afraid of being unfaithful to the gospel. We’d much rather be wrong and dignified than right and crazy. The established church has grown comfortable with itself, much like the initial gathering that day in Capernaum. We teach with quotes that we like. We quibble over unimportant things. But I think congregational consultant Bill Easum has pinned down one of our big problems as the established church by saying that we’ve chosen being “nice” over really being Christian. He says in an oft quoted article called “On Not Being Nice for the Sake of the Gospel,”

“...I'm convinced that one of the main sins of the established church is that we have taught ourselves to be nice instead of being Christian. In spite of aspiring to be a disciple of Jesus, we teach that the essence of Christianity is to be nice. Where do we get such a notion? Certainly not from the actions of Jesus!”

“Certainly not from the actions of Jesus,” Easum says, and he may be right. Jesus’ ministry was not always nice! By emphasizing being nice in the church, we have inadvertently created stumbling blocks to following Jesus’ lead. We have allowed the demons a voice, perhaps not in such obvious ways as this text. But when we fail to confront those who would sneer about the “Nazarene” among us, when we base our ministry on listening to those who say that a new way of following Jesus will only destroy us, when we privately lick our wounds and never share with one another how desperate we are to trust the teachings of the Holy One – we have learned how to be nice, not Christian.

Not long ago, I read an article about teaching teenagers about relationships. They were asked to talk about how they would want someone to break up with them. A good percentage of them said that they would want to know directly if someone was not interested in dating them anymore. But they also found that “directness” hard to do. In an effort to not hurt the other person’s feelings, relationships were drug out past a point of being comfortable, or their friend would start dating someone else and expect them to get the hint. As they talked about it the teens realized that, in trying to be nice, they were creating more pain in the long run. I would suggest that we run into the same problems in the church. In our efforts to be nice, sometimes we avoid certain conversations in our relationships – fearing the hurt that it may cause. The most loving thing to do is sometimes the hardest. When we cannot talk about what’s going on in our relationships directly, the indirectness tends to fragment the pain. I continue to be amazed that Jesus was willing to talk to anyone about anything. He even spoke the word that needed spoken to the demons.

We are good at teaching our children how to be nice. We teach them to respect their elders, clear their own mess, and say they’re sorry when they’ve done something wrong. We’re pretty good at instilling Sunday School manners and values. But as they grow into adults, are we just as good at teaching them how to have the courage to follow Jesus? Do we model for them the maturity, forthrightness, and confidence of discipleship? Will we show them that we are indeed willing to call out the things that bring pain to the Body of Christ so that the healing can begin? If so, the message will begin to get out that Jesus is in our midst to heal the brokenness of the world in our little corner of it.

Now, I must confess, this message scares me. It scares me to see it leap so clearly out of the text. It scares me to relay it to you. I’m scared enough just thinking that one day Chuck may pop up in the congregation and interrupt the sermon, and I know that he’s a friendly antagonist. I know that I have rested in the comfort of being way too orderly of a Presbyterian, and I know that it is scary business diving head-first into the conflict of once again transforming the established church into God’s church for our generation. Though it scares me right down to my toenails, I hope I have the courage to follow Jesus. I wonder if together we will have the courage to continue the healing ministry that Jesus began so long ago. Healing wounded bodies may actually be the easier part. Healing wounded souls is frightening, uncomfortable, and not at all easy work. We don’t have the skills of Christ to see and hear the demons so clearly. Our muddled human condition means that we are going to have to take care if we want to get it right. But Christ does not call us to ignore the pain of the world, Christ works through our hearts and hands to heal it. May we have the courage to feel our neighbor’s pain.

Amen.