February 8, 2009
Rev. Patricia L. Liberty
Dallying with Demons
This business of healing makes us all a little nervous. If you channel surf in the middle of the night and you can’t miss some religious program where people are falling in the aisles and after being touched by the healer. All the while a scrolling marquis at the bottom of your screen encourages you to remortgage your house and send the money to Brother Bubba for his healing work.
On the other hand, we all have our personal stories of praying for someone we love to be healed only to be left confused and devastated when that doesn’t happen. I was 16 when a beloved member of my childhood church was diagnosed with breast cancer. She was the woman who was always surrounded by an army of kids. She was a Sunday School teacher, a choir mom and always had time for a heart to heart when other adults couldn’t be bothered. I adored her and pretty much thought she walked on water.
For the first time in my life I prayed like I had never prayed before. I prayed for her to be healed, I prayed for her to be well. The miracle stories from the bible were familiar to me from Sunday school, in fact Mrs. Collins had taught them to me. I believed a miracle would happen for her too. I believed what the bible said about faith making you well and asking in order to receive. I believed God would heal her.
When that didn’t happen I had my first faith crisis; how come no miracle, how come no healing? It’s a familiar struggle, we pray for someone to get well and they don’t, we pray for others and it seems nothing happens and we are left to wonder what these stories really mean.
And then you toss in the demons and the casting out that comes later in the reading and there is something to confuse just about everyone. It seems there are couple ways these stories are interpreted.
We dismiss the stories as quaint and use our twenty first century brains to rationalize some version of what really happened. Since it can’t be what it appears to be we make it what is manageable.
Or we assume our prayers aren’t good enough, that it wasn’t God’s will that our loved one be healed. Or perhaps we just settle into the notion that God is not all God’s cracked up to be. Woody Allen expressed the idea saying, “the most that can be said for God is that he’s an underachiever.”
For better or worse, none of those options captures what’s going on in this story. And all of those narrow interpretations dismiss the challenge and promise of the gospel that is hidden in this story from Mark.
There’s a lot going on this reading. Mark compresses a lot in to a few verses. He’s like the Readers Digest Condensed Version of the gospels. Everything happens quickly, events collide into each other and there are few details given. There is an urgency to Mark’s gospel that is absent in the other three, either that or Mark should have switched to decaf.
The collapse of time line may be of some comfort, otherwise it seems like Peter’s Mother in Law is healed so she can serve them. I’m glad you’re feeling better, now can you get dinner on the table? It seems a little rude and it’s always bugged me.
But Jesus delivering Peter’s mother in law was not so she could make them dinner, but so her place in the household order was restored. That’s the thing about Jesus healing…wherever it happened it restored people to their place in community.
Hers was a position of honor not servitude. Perkins in the New Interpreter’s Bible Notes, “The privilege of showing hospitality to important guests falls to Peter's mother-in-law as a matter of honor, not servitude. We even exhibit similar behavior. When special guests are expected for dinner, no one gets near the kitchen without clearance from the person who has the privilege of preparing the food. [p. 546]
No doubt there were others there who could have prepared the food, but the honor fell to her. It is not to be interpreted as a story of oppression. In fact, Jesus healing her is an act of liberation, restoring her to a place of honor in the family, albeit in a first century context.
And it’s not as innocent as it appears.
Men did not touch women who were not a part of their own family. Brian Stoffgren notes, “…touching a nonrelated woman was in itself an offense, and touching one that was sick and therefore unclean was doubly so.
But this is not all. The service of Peter's mother-in-law to Jesus (and the others) itself could have constituted work on the Sabbath, depending on what was done (.e.g., preparing food). In any case, later Jewish traditions suggest that women should not serve meals to male strangers. The important point about Jesus, however, is that he does not see the touch of a woman, even a sick woman, as any more defiling than the touch of the man with the skin disease. Both of those things were radical for his time. In healing Peter’s mother in law, he is restoring her to her place of honor in the family.
That’s what got Jesus in trouble. If Jesus were like any other first century do-gooder he would not have attracted the ire and attention of the religious poobahs.
What Jesus did with Peter’s mother in law, restoring her to her place in the family is what Jesus does on a larger scale in healing people of their demons. Mark says the whole town was out side the door, people with every manner of sickness and dis-ease. Jesus healed them so that they might be restored to their place in community life.
Important to remember that illness separated people from their community; ritual laws about clean and unclean were stringent and alienating. By touching and healing those no one would touch with a ten foot pole, Jesus embodies radical love and acceptance for all, and their reintegration into social and religious life.
Jesus messed with the status quo. His acts are not just individual healing…that’s our 21st century privatized religious perspective interpreting scripture. Jesus’ dallying with demons and healing the sick offended the religious authorities because such healing restored outcasts to their rightful place in society.
If we approach Jesus' actions as social healing -- restoring people to the community -- that presents a new set of issues for us. If what heals is radical love and acceptance, than we are all healers. The demons we cast out are those of fear, alienation, judgement and prejudice. (Brian Stoffgren, Exegetical Notes)
Who are the outcasts of our time? What kinds of social and relational healings are needed in our community? If we are the living face and hands and feet of Jesus how might we embody such healing in this place?
Behold, I give you the chicken. If you had the opportunity to see Chicken, the musical you know what I mean. One person, brought people together in a vision of community that included the outcasts…the unpopular, the geek, the new kid, the goth kid, the closeted gay kid, and even the all together kids who deep down inside were scared they weren’t good enough.
Healing, true healing, means there are not outcasts, it is about restoration and wholeness. It is relational and not just personal.
Ralph Milton writes, “We tend to think the modern equivalent of the demon possessed are the desperately insane – frothing at the mouth, running around naked – that sort of thing. But the New Revised Standard 2009 demons are much more subtle, sophisticated and devious than that. They go by names such as “popularity,” “acceptance,” “low self-esteem,” “ambition,” and many more.
And for such demons their exorcism demands a gospel of radical inclusion – unqualified love – humor and grace. And here, the gospel imperative is loud and clear.”