Ironic

Irony is defined as “a state of affairs or an event that seems deliberately contrary to what one expects.”  Or, as Alanis Morrisette sang, “it’s like ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife.”  By that reckoning, the church these days, which is someplace where we hear stories of a man who is possessed by an “unclean spirit” seems to many people to be a drawer full of ten thousand spoons when all that’s needed is a knife.

There’s plenty of irony in the strange little account of the man with an unclean spirit that we heard from the Gospel today.

No sooner has Jesus called his first, unsuspecting followers, than the next thing you know they run into this man with an unclean spirit.  The man confronts Jesus, Peter, Andrew, James, and John right there in the synagogue.  I don’t want to say that I know what it feels like to be Jesus, but I know what this feels like: the guy is screaming at them, right there in the synagogue.  And it’s a funny thing about the question that he’s yelling: “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth?”

Now, this question is ironic in a couple of different ways.  First, it’s ironic, because it is also essentially the same question that sincere inquirers after faith are asking.  This is not, strictly speaking, a question that belongs to the demonic, the possessed, the troubled, and those whose spirits are “unclean”.  It’s a question that Peter, and Andrew, and James, and John might have asked themselves.  Indeed, it’s puzzling that they didn’t; they just dropped their nets and followed Jesus, without ever asking what he’s got to do with them.

Secondly, it’s ironic because another version of that same question is likely to cross the mind of any modern person hearing about a man who has an “unclean spirit.”  What, we might well ask, has he to do with us?  How can this little episode, right at the beginning of the account of Jesus’ ministry in Mark’s Gospel, have anything meaningful to do with you and me, who are most likely dubious about the category of “unclean spirits” to say the least?

But let’s take the text on its own terms for a minute.    Sometimes in the Gospels we come across these unclean spirits, sometimes they’re demons, who strangely use plural personal pronouns, as is the case in this instance: “what have you to do with us?”  

I find myself wondering, for whom else was this unclean spirit speaking?  There’s no indication that this is some affected appropriation of the royal “we.”  So two things are possible.

First, it’s possible that the man was possessed by multiple spirits.  And elsewhere in the Gospels this possibility is suggested again, but it’s not clear that that’s the case here.

The second possibility is that the unclean spirit was speaking for other unclean spirits with whom it was in contact.  It’s as though, in first century Palestine, there might have been a kind of invisible (and wireless) network of communication through which the unclean spirits could keep in touch.  It’s a little ironic that all those centuries ago there might have been a kind of unclean social media, at least in the spiritual realm.

And if that’s the case - if it’s possible that the unclean spirits had some kind of app they used to keep in touch with one another - then it’s interesting to see how this unclean spirit responded to Jesus.  “Have you come to destroy us?” the unclean spirit asked.

Now, you would think that unclean spirits probably would be paranoid, wouldn’t you?  But just because they’re paranoid doesn’t mean that Jesus isn’t out to get them.  He is!

But there remains a highly curious feature of the unclean spirit - one that does not fit with my expectations at all, since I would expect such a spirit to be representative of what’s called elsewhere in the New Testament, “the spirit of falsehood.”  And this surprising capacity of the unclean spirit becomes apparent in the next thing it says to Jesus, “I know who you are,” the spirit says.  I know who you are.  This is ironic: that the unclean spirit knows who Jesus is before even his own followers do.

What happens next is truly ironic, since, stunningly, the unclean spirit speaks the truth, plainly and clearly.  It’s a revelation that would have been highly confusing for Peter, and Andrew, and James, and John, who, themselves, do not really know yet who Jesus is.  Ironically, the unclean spirit knows.  And this knowledge was perhaps gained because the unclean spirit had access to the spiritual rumor mill that operates on a different plane, one to which Peter, Andrew, James, and John had no access.

“I know who you are,” said the spirit, and then, spills the beans: “the Holy One of God.”

A contemporary reading of this passage should, I think, confront the modern person with still more layers of irony.  First there was the irony of the question, “What have you to do with us?”  And now there is more irony.  Because, of course, we modern people naturally assume that our knowledge and insight is far superior to that of any first century person’s, that our worldview is more refined, and our thought is more sophisticated, we are better informed by a staggering measure.  Yes, that’s right; I hear you thinking, we are smarter and more knowledgeable than first century yokels who believed in unclean spirits.  And yet, we have constructed vast networks of invisible, wireless communication, on which all this knowledge and sophisticated thought might flourish and make us better people.  It is not populated by spirits of any kind, but only by digital information.  Ironically, with all this knowledge, all this connectivity, all this power, we cannot discern the truth.  Indeed, falsehood abounds.

It has been astonishing to me to learn in recent weeks, just exactly what kinds of things people believe, that they have read on the Internet.  It might be comical, if the implications of the conspiracy theories that people are feeding to one another were not so profound.  Compared to the kinds of rumors (things that people claim to have “heard” on the Internet) that animated the assault on the Capitol a few weeks ago, as well as other episodes of political unrest, a mere “unclean spirit” seems kind of quaint.

Of concern to me is the matter of truth.  And I’m struck by this encounter with the man who had the unclean spirit, because it includes this bold proclamation of what I take to be the truth: that Jesus is the Holy One of God.  And I am a little flummoxed by the irony of it all, because the truth comes from a source that I would have otherwise considered highly unreliable.

Jesus, himself, responds to this troubling reality when he rebukes the unclean spirit.  “Be silent!” he says.  Jesus had just begun to form his little community.  Peter and Andrew and James and John, were just getting to know him; they had dropped everything, almost inexplicably, to follow him.  They were not ready for irony.  They were not ready to process the whole truth of who he is.  And Jesus certainly didn’t want them to hear it for the first time from an unclean spirit.  It’s just a little too ironic.  What surer way to taint information than to disseminate it from the lips of an unclean spirit?  And Jesus does not want his name or the truth of his identity so much as uttered by the voices on the social network of the unclean spirits.

Irony, as the song said, is “like ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife.”  Isn’t it ironic?

And the testimony of an unclean spirit amounts to so many spoons in a world that needs a knife.  

And so Jesus does not stop with silencing the unclean spirit, he also commands it to “come out” of the man and free him.

Clearly, the unclean spirit does not want to go (they never do), as evidenced by the convulsions and shouts or protest that the spirit makes on its way out.  But the spirit is no match for Jesus, and never was.

And as the spirit leaves the man, so too, does the irony of the entire situation, as the people see and proclaim that Jesus teaches with authority.  

Ironically, we live in a world that often no longer regards Jesus’ teachings as having much authority at all, and sees the Gospel as little more than ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife.  So many have lost track of any good answer to the question, “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth?”  They think that this question is but one of the ten thousand spoons in this world that really needs a knife

Which is why it was good that Peter, and Andrew, and James, and John were all there in the midst of all that irony.  For we are the inheritors of their witness.  They learned, by walking and talking and eating and drinking with Jesus, by working with Jesus with their hands.  

It may have seemed ironic to them when they realized that what they first heard from the lips of an unclean spirit was true - that Jesus is the Holy One of God.  Yes, it may have seemed ironic, but eventually they could see it for what it is: Good News!

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
31 January 2021
Saint Mark’s, Locust Street, Philadelphia

Alanis Morrisette’s song “Ironic” was released in Feb, 1996. It is often pointed out that her examples of irony, are not actually very good examples of a strict definition of the term. This critique, itself, seems kind of ironic. A reference to an Alanis Morrisette song in a sermon seems kind of ironic, too, doesn’t it?

A Champion's Heart

“From now on, let even those who have wives be as though they had none, and those who mourn as though they were not mourning, and those who rejoice as though they were not rejoicing, and those who buy as though they had no possessions, and those who deal with the world as though they had no dealings with it. For the present form of this world is passing away.”

What a challenge Paul’s instructions are in the First Letter to the Corinthians.  I know he is right that the present form of the world is passing away. Even though he said this two thousand years ago and we are still here, he isn’t wrong.  The present form of the world is always passing away, almost by definition.  We focus so passionately on our having and wanting and winning and losing, and it’s surely right for Paul to remind us that we are focused on the wrong things, things that are not real.  Even though we have come to understand the idea of Jesus’s return differently than Paul did, Paul isn’t wrong to call us to attention, to give us a sense of urgency.

Still, these words are challenging.  Not just hard to live up to, but challenging in their core intention, that we should somehow live as though the world we are in is not real to us.  It’s not hard to picture this going wrong.  Disregard for the world around us sounds like all the worst examples we can think of, of a grim, disdainful, Christianity.  It sounds like not caring about what happens here on this earth.  It sounds really cold.

When Hank Aaron beat Babe Ruth’s record for career home runs in 1974, two things were clear: that he was one of the all-time great baseball players and that white fans were not going to allow a great black athlete to live a peaceful, successful life.  Chasing a record in baseball is always stressful, but Aaron, famously, suffered grave threats to his security and that of his family: “My kids had to live like they were in prison because of kidnap threats,” he later told the New York Times, “and I had to live like a pig in a slaughter camp. I had to duck. I had to go out the back door of the ball parks. I had to have a police escort with me all the time. I was getting threatening letters every single day.”

There is no way to make this story less painful, and it should never be repeated, though of course it gets repeated all the time in the ongoing history of great black leaders.  What I’m wondering about this morning, though, is whether Hank Aaron’s clear-eyed assessment of the sin of racism has anything to do with the way that St. Paul is asking us to live in the letter to the Corinthians: “from now on” enjoins Paul, “let…those who rejoice [live] as though they were not rejoicing.”

Hank Aaron didn’t necessarily take up that stance because he believed Jesus was coming soon.  He was forced to live as though he were not rejoicing, because he had such a vision of the sin of the world. “All of these things have put a bad taste in my mouth,” he said, “and it won’t go away. They carved a piece of my heart away.”

His racist tormentors carved out a piece of the great heart that had led him to toil unceasingly to perfect his game.  He was the last player brought up to the major leagues from what they called the Negro leagues.  He battled racism all through his career, but those tormenters in the early seventies really took something from him.  They carved out some of what made him chase Babe Ruth’s record in the first place.  Some of what made him dare to use the gifts God had given him to their full glory.  Some of what it meant to be a hero.

Hank Aaron played through the death threats and the disillusionment. He retired a couple of years after breaking that record, exhausted and embittered, with an offensive record that still inspires awe.  This isn’t a story about everything ending well.  It’s an honest story.

What he became is something we need to know more about.  He had the heart of a peerless athlete who also carried the broken heart of the world.  He knew that the world in which he lived and worked and played so greatly was also a world gone wrong.  And he spoke courageously of that truth.  He let both things be true, the greatness of his skill and the hollow feeling it gave him to win in a world that was so utterly wrong.

Did he expect the imminent return of Jesus?  I don’t know that he did.  But did Jesus draw near to him?  Of that I am absolutely certain.  Because a moment in which we see the sin of the world clearly is a moment in which we are close to Jesus.  Any moment of truth, whether it’s about the culture we live in or the painful reality of our own heart.  Jesus is very close to the heart that has a piece carved out of it.  

When I hear Paul’s words from Corinthians this morning I think of a kind of voluntary asceticism.  I think of Christians who carefully practice relinquishing the good things of the world, Christians who know that they are living for the kingdom of God and not for the kingdom of this world.  I don’t think of baseball players.  I don’t think of people who are just exhausted by sin.  Baseball is just a game, and in the end it doesn’t matter at all what happens or doesn’t happen in a ballpark.  The whole point of a game is that when it’s over, it’s over, and you start again with a new reality next time.  The passing away of the present world is more or less like a ballgame.  

What we know, any of us who love the game, is that profound statements are made during those nine innings.  We care so passionately while it lasts.  Every pitch, every batter, every out.  It matters to the players on the field and to the fans in the stadium.  Echoes from the contest call out to the wider world.  The grandfather in his workshop with the radio on, on a hot summer afternoon, is as present to the sport as anyone there in person.  In his solitude, his attention focused, he is breathing with the game, hoping against hope, thrilling to a victory.  A child somewhere dreams of taking the field in her turn.

We care so passionately while it lasts.  And everywhere around us in this life are people who play injured, in body, mind, and spirit.  Maybe most of us know this truth on some level: that the world is broken and it is the place where all our truth is told.  

Who dares to have the heart of a champion in this world?  Who can hold the passion of accomplishment or the ache of loss, knowing that this broken world is the place where God happens for us?  Who dares to admit that a champion in this life will not always feel whole, that those who break the records know how hollow their accomplishments are?  

It’s not cold, this living for the coming of Jesus.  It’s not distance from the world.  It’s heartbreak.  And it’s hope.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2021/01/23/hank-aaron-racism-home-runs/

https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/30759337/hank-aaron-lasting-impact-measured-more-home-runs

Preached by Mother Nora Johnson
24 January 2021
Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

Nothing Is Ever Enough

Samuel was the child who was given to the childless mother, Hannah, when she prayed to God and asked to thus be blessed.  Remember that Hannah had bargained with God.  If you give you me a child, she prayed, then I will give him back to you to be consecrated to your service.  Perhaps she did not really expect God to answer her prayer.  This was her Hail Mary, except the Hail Mary had not been invented yet.  It was a last ditch, desperate measure.  And it worked.

Hannah kept her part of the bargain.  When the child was still young, she took him to the house of the Lord at Shiloh, which was the center of Jewish worship.  These were the days before the epicenter of Jewish life has moved to Jerusalem.  The ark resided at Shiloh, which is more or less the same thing as saying that God lived there.  Hannah took her young child, the answer to her prayers, and brought him to Shiloh to present him to Eli, the chief priest, as she had promised she would.

Eli’s own sons, Hophni and Phineas, had corrupted the priesthood they shared with their father.  They were greedy men, who used their sacred office for their own profit.  They took the choicest parts of the meat that was to be offered for sacrifice, and kept it for themselves, depriving not only the supplicant of his offering, but depriving God of what was meant for God.

Not only were Eli’s sons a disaster, it’s striking that the account of Samuel’s call is replete with details of deficiencies.  “The word of the Lord was rare in those days; visions were not widespread.”  Eli was going blind.  And, of course, Samuel himself - the child for the childless - might never have been born.  And in an intriguing and ominous detail we are told that “the lamp of God had not yet gone out.”  The circumstances are not auspicious or promising, but  in the midst of all these limitations and deficiencies, God called Samuel.

Now, Israel was not yet a nation with a blue and white flag, the star of David, Holy Land sites to visit, and olive wood trinkets for sale in every gift shop. Israel was the confederation of tribal peoples whose prayers were directed toward Shiloh and the God who lived there.  At more or less the moment that Hannah brought her young son to Shiloh to leave him there for the Lord, Israel was on the cusp of a political transition.  The Philistines were a threatening external force.  And for Israel, having been governed by what the Bible calls “judges” for generations, things were about to change.  

Samuel grew up to serve Israel as prophet, priest, and judge, as well as commander of the military.  But his sons were corrupt, as had been the sons of Eli, his mentor.  And the people went to Samuel and asked him to choose for them a king.  The judges had been figures of wisdom who mediated God’s law for the people, but they were no kings.  And the people wanted a strong ruler with real power over them (and over others, too).  They told Samuel that they wanted to be “like other nations.”

Feeling a bit rejected, Samuel took it to the Lord in prayer.  And God heard the request for what it was, and reassured Samuel, “they have not rejected you,” God said to him, “but they have rejected me from being king over them.” (1 Sam 8:7)  And eventually, God relented and told Samuel to “set a king over them.”

Did you notice how Nathanael reacted when he changed his mind about Jesus?  Having first rejected the notion that anything good could come from Nazareth, Nathanael pivots quickly, once he realizes that Jesus has real power.  And this is what Nathanael says, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God,” he says, “you are the King of Israel!”  You are the king! You are the king!

Some part of Nathanael had been formed by the memory of a people who longed to have someone with real power in charge of them.  Not satisfied with God’s rule, nor with the counsel of wisdom, they wanted a king.  And Nathanael is not much different.  The Roman Empire was an occupying force, and the fortunes of the Jews were subject to the whims of the emperor.  No one wants to bow down to a distant foreign crown.  But a king of our own?  That would be something!  So, at the slightest hint that Jesus is possessed of real power, Nathanael’s imagination is off and running.  Here is a king of our own, so that we can be a power of our own.  Maybe Nathanael hoped that Israel could again be like other nations.

Most of the time when I am reading and trying to interpret the scriptures, I read with the prejudice that the point of the writings is to teach us something about God.  But of course, there are times when the point of the writings is also to teach us something about ourselves.  One of the things that we learn about ourselves if we read the sacred texts is that nothing is never enough.  We are never satisfied.  In the midst of paradise it wasn’t enough for us.  Being freed from the bondage of slavery wasn’t enough.  Led to a land of milk and honey wasn’t enough.  A covenant of love and favor wasn’t enough.  Wisdom wasn’t ever enough.  It’s never enough.  This seems to be a pretty basic rule of the human condition.

The sacrifice of God’s only Son so that the love than which there is none greater could be made manifest for any and all ... is not enough.  It’s never enough for us.  So, give us a king!  Maybe then it will be enough.  (We have done this ourselves with Christ, of course.  We hailed him as our matchless king just as soon as we decided that his death on the Cross wasn’t enough for us, nor his mighty resurrection and glorious ascension.)  It is never enough for us, is it?

Maybe it’s a function of the times we live in that puts me in this frame of mind, seeing how self-destructive it is when it’s never enough.  I’ll let you paint by numbers for yourselves to see the myriad ways that privilege has been transposed into grievance in our society, and how the grotesque disparity of wealth in our nation is the consummate assertion of the idea that it’s never, ever, ever enough.  Maybe we really do want a king, and not just a wise old man who can make things work for people?

We have so much in common with our forebears.  We are in the midst of countless limitations and deficiencies, and the circumstances of this present moment are not auspicious or promising for anything much, if you ask me.  But the lamp of God has not yet gone out.  And Washington is not Shiloh, thank God.

One reason to read the scriptures is to learn about ourselves - even though we mostly think that we have little in common any more with the simple-minded, unsophisticated people.

But we have this in common: nothing is ever enough for us.

And this: sometimes we think it would be a good idea to have a king who can have real power over us.

And this: the word of the Lord seems rare these days, and visions are not widespread.  There are countless limits and deficiencies, blindness where we need vision, barrenness where we need hope.  The times are not auspicious or promising.

But the lamp of God has not yet gone out.  It is never enough for us, but God is not done with us yet.

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
17 January 2021
Saint Mark’s, Locust Street, Philadelphia

Samuel and Eli by John Singleton Copley