Sermon - The Fruit of an Unholy Spirit (1/31/2021)

Epiphany 4B (Deuteronomy 18:15-20; Psalm 111; 1 Corinthians 8:1-13; Mark 1:21-28)

They were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes.

I think the first time I ever thought seriously about becoming a pastor was when I was in college.  I went back to my home church on vacation and remember saying to myself, “This is so boring.”  Have you ever had that experience in church?

And I remember thinking to myself:  It doesn’t have to be boring, the gospel is exciting stuff.  To love God, to love our neighbor as ourselves, to be part of a community of love – don’t we all want that?  And this world, where people do not love God and do not love their neighbors as themselves, is the place where God came to show us love means suffering violence rather than inflicting it – but that Jesus’s way of the cross leads, perhaps sometimes to suffering and loss, but ultimately it leads to resurrection life, abundant life, freedom, and peace. “How can you possibly make that boring?” I thought to myself. “I can do better than that.”

Well, I know that when Jesus showed up one Sabbath at the synagogue in Capernaum, he was anything but boring.

I’ve learned a lot along the way, including that being a pastor is more difficult than I thought it was.  But I’ve also learned that what makes church interesting is not doing something new or different all the time.  Originality is not a virtue when it comes to theology.  What makes the gospel of Jesus Christ interesting is not that it’s new and different, but it’s the same story that we never stop learning about it.

Because in every new situation of our lives, every single day, multiple times each day, we have the opportunity to love our neighbor the way God loves us.  To love our spouse, our child, our parent, our co-worker, our teacher, our student, our friend, our relative, our neighbor, a stranger – whomever we happen to meet, in whatever way we meet them – we have an opportunity to love them the way Jesus did, and perhaps to experience love in return.  And sometimes we succeed, more or less, and it is an astonishing and indescribable joy that we experience.  And more often than not, we miss the opportunity, and if we’re willing to acknowledge it and learn from it and try to do better the next time, we again experience a consolation and grace.

Have you been with someone who really lived this every day?  Someone who has discovered, in their everyday lives, the God revealed in the crucified and risen Jesus.  Someone who has come to know the abundant life that comes from a life rooted in faith in God’s gracious love.  Even if those people never utter the name of Jesus, their words and actions carry authority.  The authority of their experience that the gospel is true and that living in accordance with the gospel yields what Paul calls the fruits of the Holy Spirit – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.  Even when these people fail, they do it gracefully, they own up to it, they ask forgiveness, they are genuinely concerned about hurt that they have caused, and they seek to make it right.

But we’ve also all experienced people whose lives are centered somewhere else than God’s grace.  People who do not have faith that they are loved and accepted as they are, and so who are constantly trying to prove their worth to you, to themselves, perhaps to God.  People who are quick to deflect blame from themselves by accusing others.  In the legal world, the line I ofen hear is “Oh, my assistant messed that up.” That’s like nails on a chalkboard for me – throwing someone less powerful under the bus instead of taking responsibility.  When our lives are centered somewhere other than in the gospel – even if we say the name of Jesus – we see the fruits of an unholy spirit – hate, anxiety, conflict, impatience, falseness, belittling, abandonment, harshness, and a lack of self-awareness.  And sometimes that’s all of us, if we are honest about it.

When Jesus comes into the synagogue at Capernaum and begins to speak, it is immediately obvious to everyone that this is a person who speaks about God and, more importantly, knows the God of whom he speaks.  He speaks with a lived authority of the truth of the good news of God that is surprising and compelling.

But in the synagogue at Capernaum that Sabbath, there was someone who had an unholy spirit.  Yes, in the holy place, on the holy day, there was someone who had an unholy spirit.  It happens.  It could be any one of us, on our bad days, when we are living out of something other than faith.  Perhaps there are some of us here this morning who have an unholy spirit – who have been running ourselves ragged feeding some anxiety deep within us, who have believed bad news about ourselves, who have taken out our anxiety on others, who don’t even realize just how far off the mark we’ve gotten.  It happens.  Even to believers.

Notice what Jesus does when he comes into the synagogue where someone has an unholy spirit.  Notice that Jesus does not initiate a confrontation with this person – it’s the unholy spirit that is the first to speak up.  Jesus simply teaches with authority – he speaks the good news of God that he knows at the most profound depth of his own self, the good news the beloved Son tells about the loving and merciful Father, the love that produces the fruit of a Holy Spirit.

Jesus does not say – What is this unholy spirit doing in this holy place on this holy day? Get out of here!  No, Jesus simply speaks his own truth with authority.  It’s the unholy spirit that feels threatened by this good news, and that draws attention to itself.  Who knows how long the person with an unholy spirit had been going to church week after week without feeling threatened in the least – but now, in the presence of Jesus teaching with authority, the unholy spirit reveals itself for what it is.

Jesus doesn’t love the unholy spirit – but Jesus does love the person who has the unholy spirit.  Jesus does not evict the person with the unholy spirit from the holy place; Jesus frees the person from the unholy spirit.  The unholy spirit comes out, with convulsions and loud noises, yes, but it comes out, and the person is set free.  What identifies and ultimately drives out the unholy spirit is not Jesus condemning or accusing the person who is captive to it – condemnation and accusation are what unholy spirits do.  No, it’s simply Jesus living the good news of God with authority.

There are all manner of unholy spirits in the world today.  The more you have heard the good news of God that Jesus came to announce, the more unholy spirits you see – in yourself, in others, in our country and in our world.  Unholy spirits that deflect blame and that captivate people with fear and conspiracy theories and that accuse and condemn.

In Jesus God has come to free us from every unholy spirit that captivates us whenever we operate from a place other than faith in the good news of God’s grace.  And Jesus does this simply by living that good news with authenticity and authority.  And as he frees us from every unholy spirit that binds us and holds us down, he invites us to begin to live out of this good news ourselves.  If we do, I promise, it will never be boring.