Fourth Sunday after Epiphany
The Gospel of Mark 1:21-28
1 Cor. 8:1-13
Preached at St. John’s Christopher St, NYC
January 31, 2021
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Grace and peace to you from God the Creator, Christ the Liberator, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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Today is the fourth Sunday of Epiphany. We have been spending the beginning of the Epiphany season dwelling in the sacrament of baptism – affirming our baptismal promises and renunciations, remembering the way that God’s grace flows over our lives. Baptism is a gift from God, bringing us into our vocations as children of God, and bringing us into a wider community that spans space and time.
In all three of our readings today, God is experienced through other people, through community. In Deuteronomy, God speaks through the prophets. In 1st Corinthians, there is an active conversation between different viewpoints on how to live faithfully. And in Mark, Jesus casts out an unclean spirit in the midst of gathered people. Since we experience God through community, how we show up and act in community matters.
On a first read-through, the 1st Corinthians text seems light years away from our current context, but the issue of eating the meat from offerings was an active conversation and debate in the diverse community of Corinth. I think it’s important to place the scope of this debate into the historical and contextual landscape of Corinth.
Corinth was an extremely diverse Roman colony, and that diversity was reflected in the early house-churches. Differences of background, of education, of belief led to internal conversations and debates of how to live and worship faithfully – Paul’s letters to the Corinthians were in response to some of the questions that were being asked among and between the house-churches. When offerings were made in the various temples, some of the meat would be cooked and served, and some would be sold cheaply to meat markets. Because of that, it wasn’t always clear if meat you were buying had originally been part of an intended offering. The meals that were served from the temples offered more clarity, but then the question still remained – was it okay for followers of Christ in Corinth to eat meat that was part of an offering?
Paul frames his response not only in terms of faith, but in how our actions and behavior impact others in our community. For Paul, he doesn’t see a theological problem with eating this type of meat, because the person eating it knows God, and is known and loved by God. Eating this kind of meat isn’t a betrayal of that, and isn’t a sign of allegiance to another God for someone who believes in Christ. And yet, even though there is no theological problem, Paul still doesn’t eat meat, and that is wholly out of concern for others in his community. Humans are social creatures – we learn from each other, we mimic each other – I know that there are some words and phrases that I use simply because close friends use them regularly – and we look to each other to place our actions and our lives in context.
Remembering again that the house-churches of Corinth were a diverse community, even though Paul doesn’t have a theological issue with eating this type of meat, it seems like there are others who do. That others in the community see it as allegiance to another God, or perceive it as modeling behavior that could be misconstrued as allegiance to another God. Since we can’t read each other’s minds, even if the person eating this kind of meat knows that their faith belongs to Christ, other people can’t necessarily know that from the outside, which could impact their own relationship to God and Christ.
I connect this discussion in Corinth to contemporary talk about impact and intent. If our words or actions hurt others, even if that wasn’t our intention, how much responsibility do we bear for the impact? If our words or actions, without the full context of our intentions, impact others in our community negatively, can we justify continuing those words and actions? Paul would say no. He writes that it would be better to change our actions for the sake of others in our community, even if it’s inconvenient for us, or costs us. He asks us to cast out behaviors that members of the community have named as harmful, in order for the community to be called together in care.
Paul writes that our community and neighbors are more important than us being right about the technicalities. In the context of Corinth: technically, theologically, no, it’s not a bad thing to eat meat that had been offered in a temple. But relationally, faithfully, because it can hurt others and their relationship to God, followers of Christ should avoid eating meat where they don’t know the origin, or if it is from a temple.
And I want to name that I don’t think the people who were eating meat from the temple were actively trying to harm their community. From what we read, it doesn’t seem malicious – it seems like a group of diverse people, trying to navigate how to faithfully live together in the world, and conflict and unintended impact necessarily arises from that. It’s a reality of living in community.
The undertone of casting out actions and patterns that don’t serve the community gives us a bridge to enter into the Mark text. Here, there is an unclean spirit, which is can also be translated as an evil spirit, that is actively impacting both an individual and their community. In order to fully grasp the importance of Jesus casting out the unclean spirit, the lens I’m asking us to engage with is one where we take seriously the possibility and reality of spirits in the world. That they are not a historical artifact, but still present, even if the way they manifest in our bodies and our collective lives might look different.
It places evil both as something both entwined with us, that impacts us, but also as something that can be cast out. A place where my own theology has shifted over time is in relation to unclean spirits. If you had asked me, years ago, if I thought spirits, unclean or Divine, existed in the world, impacted our bodies, I would say no. But after reading about unclean or evil spirits in the Gospels, feeling the Holy Spirit invoked at the table, honoring ancestors and the great cloud of witnesses, that has shifted for me. I was changed after learning from many cultures that are not steeped in whiteness, not chained to the “rational” or the “right” at the expense of the experiential, spirits that affect us are part of the landscape. I’ve come to notice that even though spirits and evil aren’t commonly discussed in the mainstream discourse, they are still present in many peoples lives. I wonder if the dismissal of spirits and demons from our collective consciousness is intentional, and something that harms us.
When Jesus comes to the synagogue and teaches, he teaches in a way, and with an authority, that is a new experience for that community. And one of the first beings to recognize the authority Jesus has is the unclean spirit that has taken up residence in a member of that community. The unclean spirit, recognizing that Jesus is of God, reacts strongly to the presence of God, crying out, “what have you to do with us? Have you come to destroy us?” And Jesus responds by calling out the unclean spirit. In doing this, Jesus affirms and reclaims the person for God. Jesus draws a line in the sand, and says that the unclean spirit cannot have this person anymore. And this is astonishing. It is awe-inspiring. God has come in the incarnation of Jesus of Nazareth, casting out the unclean spirits that are impacting the community, whether they know it or not.
One thing that we don’t know from the text is how the unclean spirit was impacting this person before Jesus showed up. Did he know that he was overshadowed by an unclean spirit? Did others in the community know? Did it affect his actions and relationships in an obvious way?
We do know the unclean spirit does not go quietly. It convulses the person and cries out, but that is a death rattle. When unclean spirits are called out, they do not always go quietly. They lash out, trying to do one last bit of damage, before they are cast out, no longer to have a foothold in the world. As we look around our own world, we might notice places where unclean spirits are refusing to go quietly, even as they are being cast out. Unclean spirits that put money before people, normalcy before transformation, and unity before repair.
We might also notice places where the astonishing love and power of God is taking hold, often through community. It is amazing, and astonishing, how much individual people and groups have stepped up to care for each other in the midst of the pandemic, even as it breaks my heart that there isn’t an adaptive and cohesive response from those charged with working for the collective good. It is amazing, and astonishing, to witness how we are changing our actions for the sake of others in our community, even when it costs us. Redistributing money, food, and masks, working across difference, knowing that our community and our neighbors are more important than always being right. That God comes to us through other people, and so we are responsible for our relationships, and our impact.
In baptism, we are marked with the cross of Christ, and anointed by the Holy Spirit. In baptism, God claims us, and casts out our unclean spirits, over and over, for the sake of love. In baptism, we are enfolded into community, and are accountable to our community, and to God. As we encounter the world, with all its complexities, joys, and heart-wrenching pain, casting out the unclean spirits might feel overwhelming, and impossible. I don’t believe all of the unclean spirits will be cast out of our world and our bodies in my lifetime. And yet…
It might seem early in the year, but gardeners are already placing their seed orders, already setting little cups of dirt under indoor grow lights, already planting some flowers and bulbs outside. This is in anticipation of spring, of new life, of the harvest season that follows the fallow season. These little sprouts grow, and propagate, and flower. Just as how we discern what is faithful living in community, centering those most impacted, how we experience God through each other, grows, and propagates, and flowers.
We experience God through each other. Living into the reality that we are claimed for God, and for each other, casts out what is harming us and calls us back to community. Our interpersonal relationships are models for our collective relationships. There is responsibility in that, but there is also so much grace and astonishment in how God keeps emerging in our midst, casting out and calling us back. Thanks be to God.
Reed Fowler 