The Final Frontier
Psalm 111
Mark 1:21-28
“Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise. Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds; to seek out new life and new civilizations; to boldly go where no man has gone before.” These are the original words spoken at the opening of the series Star Trek that played in the 1960s. It didn’t last five years actually; only three. Apparently, Star Trek was ahead of its time. When it was regenerated in the late 80s far more successfully and spun off after that again and again and again, a couple of words in that opening sequence were changed – its five year mission became its “continuing” mission, and the sexist “where no man has gone before” became “where no one has gone before”. However, I don’t know too many people in our country that haven’t heard one version or another of these words at one time or another and possibly, probably thrilled to them. There is something about that sense of adventure and suggestion of Manifest Destiny that appeals to our American souls.
We love being the cowboys, the astronauts, the ones who boldly go where no one has gone before. We love to know that we are in control of our destinies, and possibly even ordering the destinies of others. We certainly don’t want anyone or anything coming in and telling us that we are doing it wrong or even that there might be a better way. And authority – hah! There is no higher authority than our own free will, is there? Is there?
Jesus is in Capernaum. Capernaum was a city in his home region of Galilee but not as far off the beaten track as his hometown of Nazareth. There is lots of biblical evidence that Capernaum became Jesus’ home base of operations during his ministry. It is where he settled when not “on the road”. It is the town from which he selected many of his disciples. It lay along the northwest shore of Lake Kinneret and was a border town on the major imperial highway leading from Jerusalem to Damascus. Thus, it was strategically located with travel by foot or by water an easy option.
Jesus and his disciples are probably staying at Simon Peter’s home; it is definitely where they are located in the verses immediately following this passage. When the Sabbath comes along, Jesus goes to the synagogue; a synagogue whose ruins still exist and can be visited today if one goes to on a tour of Israel and the Middle East. Jesus goes to the synagogue and begins to preach.
Now here’s the interesting thing – the Bible tells us that he begins to preach as one with authority – unlike the scribes. This, in some ways, is a strange statement. For the scribes were the ones who were the professional interpreters of the Law in Jewish synagogues. One would think that they had authority and would preach with it.
So the difference must lie somewhere else. Let’s look at the wording of this part of the passage again. “They were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes.” Do you hear it? The Bible is telling us that Jesus preaches with internal authority rather than external. The scribes’ authority came from their knowledge and expertise of the Law as students of it. It came from the study and the knowledge of the Torah, the written word of God. Jesus authority came from God alone. It was apparent in his teaching that he was not only speaking from the knowledge of the books of the Hebrew Bible, but that it was the literal voice of God coming out of him.
Just in case you’re not getting this, the author of Mark goes straight from this claim of Jesus’ authority into a physical, visible example of it. A man with an unclean spirit, a demon-possessed man, is in the temple and upon hearing Jesus preach, the man cries out, “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God.”
So this man, or rather the demons who are occupying him, recognize Jesus for who he is. They cry out to him as the Holy One of God and basically ask him to leave them alone. But Jesus does quite the opposite. He immediately rebukes him, and says, “Be silent and come out of him!”
What do the demons do then? They throw the man into convulsions and fly out of his body. Now, I don’t know what your reaction would be if Jesus were to walk into the Presbyterian Church of Sweet Hollow – and remember, nobody knew who he was at this point, he was just a traveling guest preacher, in a way – and then someone in our congregation leapt up, screaming and carrying on, calling him the Son of God, but Jesus, this pulpit supply guy, just ignores the apparent heckling or threat or whatever and commanded demons to fly out of him and the man then goes into convulsions in the aisle, shrieking and flailing about and then goes suddenly limp, but I think I’d be more than a little freaked out. I’d be thinking and maybe even saying, “What was that?!”
The people in the temple do respond that way – with amazement and wonder. And they do say, “What was that?!” followed by an interesting statement: “A new teaching with authority. He commands even the unclean spirits and they obey him.”
This fascinates me. They don’t start saying, “Gee, I’ve got to go home now and get Aunt Edith and bring her here for him to cure…” and all begin running about like chickens with their heads cut off. Or maybe they do, but the Bible doesn’t tell us that part. They recognize what he’s done, first of all, as a teaching, and second of all as a teaching with authority.
This little scripture reading uses the Greek word exousia twice. Exousia is translated both times as “authority”, but its first definition is actually “the power of choice, the liberty of doing as one pleases”. So Jesus not only has the authority to preach with God’s word and to command demons to depart, but he also has the choice of whether or not he wants to do so. The second definition is “physical and mental power” which clearly Jesus has are seen in the results of his preaching and healing. And the third definition is the translation that is actually used here: “the power of authority (influence) and right (privilege)”. And we are told twice in these 8 verses that Jesus has exousia, authority, the power of choice, the right of privilege. Clearly, this is important. What Jesus wants to do, Jesus can do.
This is both exciting and dismaying to those in our cultural context. After this historical episode, Jesus’ fame begins spread throughout the region at an astounding rate. People are grabbed by the fact not only that he can do these deeds of wonder and power, but by the fact that he has the authority to do so. I don’t know that we today would be so happy about it. We don’t like it when our leaders overstep their bounds, when they use more power than we think is reasonable, when they exert control in ways that we find unacceptable. As I said before, we like running our own lives, making our own decisions, believing that no one knows what’s best better than we think we do. No one is going to tell us how to raise our kids, how to spend our money, where to go and when to go there. The final frontier is out there and it’s for us to conquer.
Or maybe not… Maybe the final frontier is not outside ourselves at all, but within ourselves. For isn’t the hardest thing of all for us to give up that same control, that power, that authority. Who in this room today doesn’t believe that he or she has the right to make decisions about his or her well-being and the management of his or her affairs? Who wants to give that power away to someone else?
Yet I believe the whole point of this passage today is that somebody else already has that power. That somebody is God in Jesus Christ. Everything that we have, everything that we are already belongs to God. We would not be here without God’s having knit us, each and every individual here, together in our mothers’ wombs. We would not have what we have without the grace of the brains that we were given and the ability to use them, the skills that we’ve acquired and developed, the choices that we’ve made have been enmeshed with the opportunities brought before us by the loving God of the Universe. The confluence of all the strands of our lives have brought us to this place, this morning, for this reason:
To realize and understand that our Creator God has brought us to this point with the strong desire for us to give our will and our lives over to Him / Her / It. That at this point in time, we have this window of opportunity, to surrender authority and allow the One who has all power to flow through us and use us to God’s greater good and glory. That the same exousia that was evident in Jesus’ preaching 2000 years ago is still present today and can enliven and embolden your lives, my life, our lives so that we might make a meaningful difference in the coming of the kingdom. So that we might take what we have and who we are and bring that to bear on situations of injustice here and around the world. That we might be examples of the ministry of justice and of love to all whose paths we cross. But here’s the tough part: it’s not about us.
Oh, we want it to be. Each and every person here wants to be and sometimes, maybe even often, thinks he or she is the center of the Universe. And that’s where we go wrong. Because the whole of our religion is not about individuality, it’s about community. Ouch!
For Americans, that is a tough nut to crack. For we are individualists to the nth degree. Yet, don’t you see? Don’t you get it? Even our God isn’t an individual. In the very basis of our faith exists a God that’s Three in One. A God that longs for and believes in community so strongly, so deeply, so totally, that God is Itself in communion with Godself. And we are called not to be rugged Marlboro Man individualists, but to be together. To work together, to play together, to share what we have with one another, not just with those we like and those who are like us, but with everyone – here in our immediate world and around the globe. In order to do this, we’ve got to let go.
Yesterday, at the Presbytery meeting, Rev. Jim Barnum, who was the outgoing Moderator, preached the sermon. Something he said really spoke to me. He was explaining why many of our churches are not growing, but I think that the statement he made is applicable to us as individuals as well. Rev. Barnum said it’s because there’s “too much control and not enough trust”.
Too much control and not enough trust. Do you see where that statement could apply to you and your life? Where is it that you need to surrender, let go and allow God the authority to manage things? In what aspects of your life could the loving God of the Universe blow through you the winds of change? Where is it that you are holding on to too much control and not having enough trust?
Your heart. The final frontier. You see, it’s not somewhere out there. It’s inside each and every one of us. Do you have the courage not to conquer it, but to surrender it to the Lord? Do you have the strength to allow God to come into your life, blow God’s Holy Spirit through your days, perform His wondrous miracles through you? Do you have the daring to choose not to go out to dinner when you feel tired and don’t want to cook, but instead to have the family eat cereal for supper and take that $50 or $100 and give it to the church or the Huntington Station Enrichment Center or Oxfam or the charity of your choice? Do you have the audacity to take your vacation this year not on the ski slopes or the beach, but as a volunteer at Heifer Project’s Overlook Farm in Rutland, Massachusetts or in rural Appalachia or even here at Sweet Hollow as a Vacation Bible School leader? Are you brave enough to step out in faith and give a CD of this sermon or any other to a friend and invite him or her to join you on Sunday to bask in the warmth and fellowship of this congregation?
I’m going to tell you a secret. You have the power, the authority, through Jesus Christ our Lord, to do great things, to be the person that God intends you to be. All it takes is – giving up! Giving up that sense of always knowing what’s best, always doing it your way, always being in control. Letting God come in and make some decisions for you. Decisions about really scary things – like money… and free time… and you can do it. You can surrender. You can let go and let God. I believe in you. I know that God does, too. Amen.