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weekend sermon

Mark 5:1-20
This is my favorite story in the NT; this story is one in a group of four stories all highlighting the power of Jesus. Of course, all of Scripture ultimately points to Jesus and His power – it’s the core of the Good News. But this section is the Bad News Bears of the Gospel. These are the hopeless situations, the moments where we sit back and fold our arms for a good show – what would Jesus do here? Moments before our story, Jesus is busy exercising power over nature as He subdues a storm (and the fears of His disciples) on the Sea of Galilee. Immediately after our story, we see Jesus’ power over the physical, as He heals a woman with a flow of blood. And right after that, He shows His power over death, as He resurrects a child. That’s a lot of power on a few sheets of paper. And the same power, the same Jesus, that was present in those moments and on these pages is present now, in this building -- He is here.

Maybe you’re not dealing with natural disaster or severe physical trouble or the death of a loved one. But each of us is struggling against the power of sin, specifically against the power of hopelessness, both in our lives and in others’ lives. Even as we worship this morning, we sense the presence of hopelessness, but we also sense that there is a beautiful, terrible power at-hand. And by receiving the Call to Worship, we have invoked that power. Annie Dillard says it this way:

“On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside of the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return.”

I am grateful to the youth group for leading us in worship this morning. But I am exceedingly grateful that they didn’t include a responsive reading. I hesitate to use the words “freak me out” from the pulpit, but when I’m asked to read responsively, “freak-out” is the most accurate theological term at my disposal. I am terrified of being the only one reading out loud, so much so that the way I usually end up dealing with it is by putting my hand over my mouth until I hear my neighbor start talking. I lose all control during responsive readings, and I get all flustered and nervous, and listen, I’ll do any religious duty required of me, but when it comes to responsive readings, I’m hopeless. As irrational as it is, there’s nothing I can do about it. My dear friend’s the same way, but he gets like this about communion. He went with a friend to a Catholic church one time, and as he approached the accidents (what the wine and bread are called, and my friend would agree that “accident” is the appropriate word), he began to freak out. Not only because he didn’t know whether to kneel or stand; not only because he didn’t know what to do with his mouth (do you stick your tongue out and say “ah”?); not only because he doesn’t like the thought of strange men putting food in his mouth; also because, in Catholic theology, the wine and the bread are understood to be Christ’s literal body (by the way, I love the fact that the Catholic church treats the sacraments with such sobriety and respect), so the wine and the bread are Christ’s literal body, and my friend couldn’t stomach the idea of salivating all over Jesus, the Son of God gliding through his esophagus. And he knew he was being ridiculous, but he felt so hopeless, and he freaked out. And in his hopeless condition, after he was handed the bread, he forgot. . . to eat. . . Jesus--he kept Him in his hand the whole time. After five minutes in the car, he realized that Jesus was suffocating in his sweaty palm, and he wanted to scream, and he wanted to laugh, too, but he couldn’t, because his catholic friend would be mortified, so he just held on tight until he got home, where he put Jesus on top of his dresser. We don’t know where he is anymore, but he’s somewhere in my friend’s bedroom.

And whether we’re talking about responsive readings or our understanding of Jesus or the ministry we’re called to or divorces or parenting difficult children or just making it from day to day, all of us have a freak-out niche, a place where we have given up hope so often that we begin to give up before we even begin.

In dealing with real parts of myself that give up hope, in being called to work that seems hopeless, and only then, in the midst of my hopelessness, the last place I would have thought to look, I begin to realize what Mark is getting at in this section of the Scripture: Hopelessness is Christ’s specialty. Whether we’re talking sermons or jobs or evangelism or family or struggle with sin, Christ loves to show his power in hopeless situations. It’s his preference, and his specialty.

Mark 5, starting in Verse 1 (read 1 – 20)

The first thing we need to understand is that Christ goes into places where man has given up hope.

Verses 1-5 read like the script of a horror movie. More than likely, it’s past the dead of night, maybe four or five – imagine Jesus leaning over to Peter, “Hey, Peter, why don’t you row us over to the Gadarene shore.” Peter looks at Jesus and laughs nervously. Peter understood what that meant. The Gadarenes was on the “wrong side of the tracks” – Gentile land. But it’s Jesus, and Peter won’t admit he’s afraid, so he begins to head that way, except he’s not making much progress because his hands are shaking violenty and the oar is barely touching the water – but surely the other disciples notice where they’re headed, and if the direction of the boat isn’t enough to give them a clue, the scent of the pigs in the air leaves no room for doubt. But it’s not the pigs that are whitening the disciples’ knuckles and generally freaking them out. They know who lives near the beach where the boat is now landing. They wait for Jesus to slap them on the back and have a good laugh at their expense, but he doesn’t. What he does is step onto the cool sand and stare into the hills. “v.2” – I want you to picture the disciples all huddled behind Jesus, and they’re squinting through the dim light up into the hills, and what looks like a hazy shadow forms on the horizon, and the shadow turns into a silhouette, and the silhouette turns into a naked, bloody, screaming lunatic sprinting down the hill directly at Jesus. Now picture the disciples grabbing for oars and telling each other how they’re sorry they weren’t better friends, making last-minute confessions, Bartholomew’s telling Matthew that he cheated on his taxes. You see, this demoniac isn’t just a big, scary man. He’s not someone you’d even want to look at. He’s the last character you’d expect to see on the feltboard in Sunday School (if so, he’d have a big scowl and big hair, and he’s be hiding behind a rock because he’s naked). Everyone in the region knew about this man. “v.5” Every night in the village below the hills, you would wake at two in the morning to hellish screaming (no storm windows). He literally scraped stones out of the ground, cut himself, and screamed all hours of the night. And there was no Safeway up in the hills. He ate pigs and grass, and quite likely, the people in the tombs. And if that wasn’t enough to convince people that this man was completely insane, the Rabbis had a method of determining if someone was a lost cause. They had 4 tests: 1 – if he roamed around at night (“5”); 2 – if he lived in a graveyard (“3”); 3 – if he tore his clothes (Luke); 4 – if he destroyed what was given to him, which he did.

But this man wasn’t always this way. Verses 3 and 4 say that he had been bound before – humans had hoped to contain him, to overpower him before things got this way, but all human restraints had failed. They tried to bind him with rope, bind him with chains, and even shackle him, but he destroyed all of it. Human effort was hopeless. Everyone had given up on him. There was no hope for this guy. Until Jesus arrives – only Jesus’ power can go where man has no hope.

I have a friend with a terrible addiction. He is an A&E Biography junkie. One night, he was watching the biography of Jeffrey Dahmer, the awful serial killer who kidnapped, murdered, and dismembered children. At a commercial break, my friend’s very southern wife said, “Karl, I heard that Jeffrey Dahmer became a Christian.” Karl chuckled and said, “Yeah, right.” After a few moments, he turned to his wife and said, “That wasn’t a very godly response, was it?” She said, “No, not so much.” We hear conversion accounts like that and respond the same way. And what’s the attitude behind that kind of response? "He’s too bad for the gospel." I think most of us know enough theologically not to confess something like that, so why do we catch ourselves thinking that way; what else is behind that attitude? What’s behind it is usually the issue of self-justification, of comparison – I’m not as bad as he is. In truth, I haven’t killed anyone . . . unless you count the Second Person of the Trinity.

We tend to live our lives by comparison, and that gives us a false sense of hope -- I’ll get back to that in a moment, but I want to mount a hobby horse for a moment. If you haven’t said it before, and I have often, then you’ve heard someone say, “There but for the grace of God go I.” I think I know what people mean when they say that, but it makes me a bit nervous. Sometimes, it sounds awfully close to two things: 1. There’s no grace in that person (I’ll return to that) and 2. “Lord, I thank you that I’m not like other people.” If we use that statement, we need to do so with care. Alright, off the hobby horse.

So Jesus goes to places where man has given up hope, and what does he do? The first thing he does is demand change.

Everytime a person encounters Christ, he will respond; he must respond. No one remains unaffected by Jesus. How did the demoniac (the demons) respond? “6” He (they) bowed down before Him and worshipped Him. And how, specifically, did he worship Him? By acknowledging Him as the only one able to do anything with Him. “7, 10, 12” – This is an interesting response, one worthy of our attention. What’s going on here? The demons, who have taken over this man, recognize the divinity of Jesus (7) and the authority of Jesus, but do they want anything to do with Him? No. They say, in effect, “You are Lord. But we don’t want one. Leave us alone, let us be, and, by the way, could we just skip the Hell business, please.” I think that’s a pretty accurate depiction of demonic knowledge of Christ. We want His protection and we want His benefits, but we don’t want to change, and more than anything, we just don’t want to go to Hell – we treat Christ like an insurance policy. But as you know, Christ will not be Savior without also being Lord. If he controls your conversion, your eternal destiny, he must also control your taxes and your parenting and your Friday nights out. If he is your master this morning, he is your master in rush hour, on your honeymoon, on the internet, in the classroom.

But there’s a second set of characters in the story (“14, 15c, 17”) – they wanted nothing to do with Jesus, either. Here he’s come and rid them of this great problem of theirs, and how do they respond? By freaking out, by asking Him to leave. It’s possible they were concerned about their financial loss (their pigs are floating like barrels in the sea now). Certainly, when Christ demands a response, it often comes in the form of material loss (less money, less comfortable lifestyle), and many would rather be rid of Christ than their possessions or their social standing. But if money were the major concern here, I imagine they would have forced Jesus to leave rather than “entreat” Him, ask him. So what was it?

I grew up in fear of Robbie Stewart, the neighborhood bully, owner of a handful of Huffy bikes and Valterra skateboards that had been mine at one point. In the summer of 1984, Doug Nash moved into the neighborhood. One day, as Robbie was approaching me on my most recent bike, right as I was considering wetting my pants again, Doug Nash walked over calmly, exercised complete dominion over Robbie (read: kicked his suburban bully ass), and sent him home crying. Now, you would think I would have been grateful, but I was terrified. Because if I was hopeless with regard to Robbie Stewart, what was I gonna do with Doug Nash? Jesus comes in and exercises complete dominion over the demoniac, takes care of him for them, and the people want him to leave – if they can’t control the demoniac, what are they going to do with Jesus? And verse 16 says the people were frightened. Why? They were moved by Christ’s power, but they weren’t moved by his grace. It’s a terrifying thing to know God as judge without also knowing him as Father.

The other reason, I think, that they wanted him to leave was that he destroyed their point of comparison. They couldn’t look at the demoniac anymore and say, “Well, at least my Johnny’s not out dealing drugs or running around naked in the tombs.” Or, “At least I’m not that bad. Lord, thank you that I’m not like other people, especially the demoniac.” Jesus destroys our comparisons with others, because in His presence, there are none to be made. He puts himself in the place of all other comparisons, and we realize that we’re hopeless. And that’s the good news of the gospel, the good news for those who see their hopelessness: there’s no one good enough for the gospel, no comparisons we can make that will prove us acceptable; yet, there’s no one too bad for the gospel.

Here, in the presence of Christ, all of these people were forced to look at themselves, not in comparison with others, but in comparison with Jesus; thus, Jesus demanded change, because none can compare, and if you can’t compare as you are, something’s gotta change. So what made the difference between the response of the demons and the villagers and the response of the formerly demon-possessed man? If this man was just as powerless to respond to Christ as the locals, just as hopeless to change, what was the difference? The difference is that Christ enabled him. Whereas the villagers decided to keep looking at themselves in comparison with other people, the demon-possessed man was left looking at himself in comparison with Jesus. And in this situation, there’s only one right response. And how do we know he made the right one? “v.15”

If this man were hopeless, then how did he manage to end up like this? Christ demands change, truly, but if he stops there, we are more hopeless than when we started. He doesn’t leave us hopeless. He goes one step further and enables the very change that he demands.

The demoniac was powerless, in bondage to something other than Christ, entirely helpless to help himself. It follows, by simple logic, that it would take someone else's power to deliver him. “V.13” -- Jesus is the one giving permission; Christ is in control. This man, who was hopeless, was commanded to change, and at the same moment, he was enabled to change.

My roommate, Paul, though he knows all the drama and gore stresses me out, insists on watching ER. If you watch emergency room shows on tv, then you’ve seen someone unconscious on a gurney, not breathing, hopeless. And the doctor’s yelling at him to “Breathe, come on! Breathe!” And at the same time, the doctor leans over and pumps his chest and breathes life into him, doing the very thing he’s demanding that the patient do. The very change he demands is the response he enables for one utterly hopeless to do so.

And at that moment when Christ breathes into the one who is hopeless, what is he doing? What he’s doing is restoring the image of God.

Take a closer look at verse “9.” Why does Jesus ask him what his name is? Because in Scripture, a name is representative of a person’s character, his nature. This man was so possessed that he didn’t have his own name anymore (no clothes, no community, so no legitimate existence, ultimately); his name was changed to Legion to reflect his nature – host to a legion of sin. This is the power of sin – it changes who, at our core, we are, who God created us to be. Sin destroys our restraints. When Christ comes into our lives, His purpose is to destroy sin and restore us back into what He intends for us to be. So what did He do for this man? Not only did he cast out the demons, but look at verse “15.” This is no accidental addition. He was running around naked, now he’s clothed and sitting; he was insane, now he’s in his right mind. God is restoring His image in this man. I think it’s easy to miss this because we bring to this text a lack of understanding about sin, and we easily forget something. We look at the demoniac, and we think, “Man, that guy needs the gospel”; and that’s true. We look at others and think the same; we even look at ourselves and think that. But the most sinful person, the demoniac, as thorough as his sin is, as hopeless as he seems – he bears the image of God. What sin does is destroy that image. What, after all, was the ultimate intention of the demons? “13.” To destroy. When we seek to deal with "sinners," we must not start with the fact that they are sinners. We must start with the fact that they are glorious ruins, that they are made in the image of God and corrupted, that they are not entirely devoid of grace, and as such, they deserve our respect; they deserve for us to treat them as individuals worthy of our time and our love, just as Jesus did with the demoniac by asking His name, by treating Him with dignity. We must be in the image-restoring business. If Christ is going to work through us, that’s how He we must work, by treating people with respect, by finding the things in people that are good and true and grace-ish and by building relationship based on those things. That's Christ’s pattern, and it needs to be the church’s pattern as it seeks to win the lost.

So what might this mean for us? When we hear an account of a celebrity or a prominent citizen becoming a Christian, what is our knee-jerk reaction? “Well, it’s not genuine. He’s too worldly, or she’s too sinful.” We do the same thing with those we know: “My sister will never become a Christian; that guy at work is too set in his ways; that one lady at the shelter is just a bad egg; my child has strayed too far; those kids at school are just evil; that neighbor I’ve been witnessing to for over three years is just too deep in sin.” If Christ hasn’t given up on them, who gives us the right to? If Christ can overpower the demoniac, is your sister’s sin, your co-workers’ sin, your friends’ sin, too much for His power? And as you present Him as powerful to save, one who demands and enables change, you must make sure people know that Christ will not be Savior without also being Lord. People must know the cost of responding to Christ in faith; you must give them time to count that cost. And they must know that Christ, because He is gracious, will enable them to respond as they should.

But let’s not stop there, with others’ sin. The most pressing issue is our own, my own, your own sin. The majority of men in the church struggle with sexual sin in one form or another: lust, pornography, abuse. And it is so powerful, making men feel hopeless. But Christ’s power goes where man has given up hope. And if He lives in us, then He has enabled us to change, and we must seek Him to empower us to respond. We all feel hopeless, at times, to lead others, especially our own families. We feel powerless to raise our children like we should, totally inadequate to show patience and love and to exercise discernment in the home. We can’t possibly go on caring for our aging parents. We can’t handle this single, celibate business for much longer. In a group this large, there are people feeling hopelessly addicted to alcohol or nicotine or drugs or gambling. The bad thing about addictions to things like pornography or gambling, you name it, is not primarily the pornography or the gambling themselves, but the fact that they destroy the image of God in us, and grace becomes polluted, and we are hopeless to do anything about it on our own. From big addictions to small addictions to everyday failures, we feel hopeless.

I’ve been revisiting Douglas Coupland lately; Coupland has become something of a spokesman for my generation, and near the end of his book Life After God, he says this, and he says it as a non-Christian, yet it’s relevant to everyone sitting here this morning: “Now-here is my secret: I tell it to you with an openness of heart that I doubt I shall ever achieve again, so I pray that you are in a quiet room as you hear these words. My secret is that I need God-that I am sick and can no longer make it alone. I need God to help me give, because I no longer seem to be capable of giving; to help me be kind, as I no longer seem capable of kindness; to help me love, as I seem beyond being able to love.”

Christ’s power, and only Christ’s power, goes to places where we have given up hope. We look at our physical circumstances, lack of money, lack of people, and feel powerless to grow as a church. And Christ calls us to seek Him, for His power goes into places where man has given up hope. He calls us even now to respond to Him, and as we seek Him, He will enable us to be the church, the individuals, that He desires for us to be.

This is the good news of the gospel, but He doesn’t stop once he has displayed His power in hopelessness, once he has gone into places where we have given up hope. He pushes us a bit farther by redefining our understanding of hope.

In this passage, he does it in two ways. He calls us to work that we can’t see, and he calls us to work that we see as hopeless.

First, he calls us to work that we can’t see. In vv. 14-17, He comes into the Gadarenes and does this work in one man, and before you know it, the herdsmen are talking about it, and then the villagers hear about it, and before you know it, the whole town marvels at what Christ has done for this man. And don’t you know that the disciples are shocked at the transformation of this hopeless man, yet they have no idea how far-reaching the tremors will be. This is the way the Gospel works. Christ works in us, but He doesn’t stop there. He makes ripples through us, and they are ripples that drift out entirely too far for us to see. This is the pattern of the Gospel: As Christ has dealt with you, so should you deal with others, and as you treat them with respect, with dignity, as individual image-bearers, so, too, will they go out and do the same with others. And, most likely, you’ll never see beyond your own circle. And the ripples never stop.

But our efforts at bearing fruit seem so often like periods of drought; we feel like saltshakers whose holes are all clogged up with humidity; we appear to ourselves as smoldering wicks. But Christ says that we ARE salt and light, not that we should be. As Christ always demands change, so too will our lives, because He is in us, also demand change, always demand a response. No one encounters the Christian and leaves unaffected; every person I meet, as C.S. Lewis says, I am helping either to heaven or to hell. When Christ rescues us from our hopelessness, he requires of us radical trust, trust that if we are faithful, He will work through us, whether we can see it or not. I think this is part of the reason He calls us to minister first to our families, because, of all situations, this one seems the most hopeless, seems to bear the least fruit, and even in this, Christ is giving us an amazing opportunity to trust.

And as He calls us to work we can’t see, He redefines our understanding of hope by calling us to work that we see as hopeless. “18-20”

Of course he wanted to stay with Christ. I can see his face, forehead scrunched and eyebrows arched, obviously disappointed, because he’s sitting in the boat, oar in hand, ready to follow Christ anywhere, and Jesus says, “No, child, you’ve got work to do here.” How would you have responded? A couple hours ago, your body was a jungle gym for everything demonic, and this man has just rescued you from the power of Satan, and you want to have him everywhere with you – in the car and on your dresser and in your sweaty palm -- and He tells you to go out and witness to people, people who’ve known you all along, people who know what you’ve been like. I’ve been a Christian for 10 years, and I still feel hopeless in this area. I think things like, “I just don’t know enough theology – I’ll do more harm than good. They’ll ask me questions I don’t know. These people know what I was like in high school; they’ll never believe it. But my family was victim to my early misguided Jesus fanaticism. Where’s Jesus when I need him?” This man has had about ten minutes of Sunday School in his life, and Christ tells him to go out. And what happens? “20.” They marveled. Why? Because He told them what Jesus had done for him and how Jesus had mercy on him. Notice the wording. Not what he had done, but what Jesus had done. I hear many testimonies, and I’m concerned about the pronoun imbalance. More often than not, in these testimonies, the first person pronouns, the “I’s,” far outweigh the third person pronouns, the “he’s.” In your weakness, talk about Him still; Christ is not limited by your weakness. He wants to use you – hopelessness is His specialty.

And of the weaknesses we have in this area, I think the main weakness is our misunderstanding of what we consider faithful ministry, hopeful ministry opportunities. We want to be where the action is, we want to be in the boat with Jesus, setting up tent at the Mount of Transfiguration. And Jesus says, “No, go back to your hometown. Go to the places you view as hopeless, as mundane, as unexciting – these are the places I love to work: hopelessness is my specialty.”

He says to us: (and I speak with fear and trembling, because I claim to speak for Jesus, and I often doubt these things, but, according to the Scripture this morning, he says to us):

You think fixing pack lunches for your kids and cleaning your home everyday is boring? I love it.

Do you think I’d be more pleased with you on the mission field than in the office? Think again.

Think it would be more fruitful to minister to the senior high than the nursery? To be on the mission field than with the senior high? Nope.

Think the public school is too restrictive and ungodly a place for you to be of any good? I’m there.

Think being a writer or a photographer or a painter isn’t your calling because you can’t make any money?

Think Kingdom work requires more degrees? You tell them what you know, that I have done great things for you and have had mercy on you. I’m calling you to faithfulness, wherever you are, whether you see results or not, whether you think the situation is full of hope or not. This is where I live, this is what I love, and for my sake, you must redefine what you think of as mundane, unspiritual, hopeless. You want to be where the action is? Tell me where you are, and that’s where I’ll be – only trust me.

I was surfing the internet some time ago and came across a website where a professing Christian was responding to the same claim that Jeffrey Dahmer had been converted in prison. Near the end of his response, he poses this question:
If Dahmer murdered and cannibalized someone who had not been "saved," and then Dahmer got "saved" himself, whose side would God be on? Who does he welcome with open arms on Judgment Day? Are we supposed to believe God embraces the murderer and lets the other go to hell?

No, I suppose we’re not supposed to believe it – it’s outrageous, it’s scandalous, it blows our circuits and freaks us out and explodes our definitions of what’s acceptable. But this is the God who allows us to handle him, the life in the bread and wine. This is the mysterious, hope-providing God of my friend’s five-year-old daughter, who sings, “Holy, holy, holy, God in a body; three-headed person, you just wait and see.” This is the God who loves to work with the hopeless, the God who specializes in hopelessness, the God who takes on flesh and tabernacles in a world of hopelessness, the God who calls for change and enables it, the God who is here this morning, who lives in us, who calls us to the maniacal act of trusting Him enough to work for results we can’t always see, who calls us to work that we consider hopeless. It’s what he loves to do; it’s his specialty. Rejoice.

the language of the first main point of much of the outline is owed to brian habig. thanks, brother, for teaching me hope for so many years.

Posted by ghetto monk at May 22, 2004 12:31 PM | TrackBack