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Back to Sermon ArchivesFebruary
1, 2009
The Rev. John Auer
Scripture: Deuteronomy 18:15-20, Mark 1:21-28
“Prophet to President: Exorcising Is Not Escaping
Our History”
As Moses prepares to give way to Joshua -- Wilderness to Promised Land, Civil
Rights to Human Rights, Prophecy to Presidency, Dr. King to President Obama (Do
you find yourself wishing we had a free month or two – just to get used to
saying that?!) – Moses sharply reminds us, “God will raise up for you a prophet
like me.” For we know as Moses’ people knew, we cannot see God and live!!
Our survival as church, state, or nation depends upon those whose long lonely
reluctant vigil it is to speak to us everything God commands! That means to
all of us – to speak especially truth to powers – including the powers of presidency!
Not this president, not any president lies beyond accountability for heeding what
prophets shall speak in God’s name. And I am going to say this morning the
president’s own former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright remains among those prophets.
I understand painfully well why a presidential or other aspirant might have to reject
their pastor. Rejection is a pastoral risk. Yet Rev. Wright speaks an
unvarnished version of Black history. It can be exorcised, but not be escaped.
United Methodist pastor Bill Wylie-Kellerman argues how much we need prophets
telling us all, even presidents, what we do not choose to hear, in ways we do not
choose to hear it! “False prophecy has become the order of our day. From the
justifications of imperial aggression to the assurances of technocratic fixers,
from urgings of Madison Avenue hucksters to the piety of media-wise religious marketers
the mimicry of the Word and the presumption of divine authority are rife.
“We pray to discern the true in a din of the false.” (Repeat)
In Jesus’ time as in our own, religious precept and teaching are manipulated
for social control. As we may say in “Interfaith Dialogue” next week, to be
Protestant is to protest the abuse and misuse of religion – by Protestants and by
all others. Jesus is here to free us from all “false authority”
in our lives – to free us to speak truth to possessive powers – as to the demonic
spirit in this man. If a demonic spirit hears and obeys Jesus and comes out,
who are we to do any the less?
Black history of this country belongs to us all. It is inescapable.
We all belong to it as well. No matter the detail and depth of our own
personal-family histories, we touch and are touched by Black history.
Every part of the body is needed to make up the whole. The whole in turn
can only be known by all of its parts. Black history is far older than
this nation – perhaps, say archeologists, older than any nation, any people on
Earth. Of course this land was made up of Native Americans before
Europeans – just as Canaan, the biblical promised land, was made up of other
peoples before Israelites. Likewise Mexican Americans.
Slavery belongs to us all. While many church traditions have confessed
and repented of that, our nation has yet to make formal apology or reparations.
So, too, Abolition and the Underground Railroad belong to us all. As does
the evolution of work songs and chants -- into spirituals, to gospels, to jazz,
to blues, to freedom songs, to rhythm and blues, to rock and roll, to soul, to disco,
to hip-hop, to rap! The Bible, too, was first a history told by losers – by
those forever defeated, captured, invaded, exiled, occupied, and oppressed.
The Bible is written under one tyranny after another – Egyptian, Syrian, Babylonian,
Persian, Greek, Roman. Imagine Histories of Color all over our colonial world
today!
Two of my favorite buttons or bumper-stickers are good for so many occasions—Question
Authority! Subvert the Dominant Paradigm! Whosoever they may be!
Unlike our culture this Super Bowl Holy Day, with our demand for clear-cut, decisive
winners – and losers! – for prophets and organizers, the game is never quite finished.
The outcome is always in doubt. We no sooner achieve one major hope -- than
we look for the next hope that first hope is pointing to! Unless and until
we make a world with “none of the above” – defeat, captivity, invasion, exile, occupation,
oppression – the game is always just beginning all over again.
Speaking of games, pastors and preachers are like the old-fashioned concept of
“player-coach.” By baptism we belong on the field or the floor with our teams.
Bill Stringfellow says clergy serve congregations, so congregations may serve the
world. We need to know what it’s like to be deep in the world everyday – as
shepherds need to know what’s it’s like to be sheep – like Jesus is both lamb and
shepherd! Our messages and our ministries need gritty grounding in risky realities.
We have no illusions of grandeur. We know laity (laos, the whole people
of God) do the heavy lifting of witness and service to faith everyday. What’s
the old saying? Those who can do, those who can’t preach!!
Question Authority and Subvert the Dominant Paradigm both are buttons for
Jesus to wear – on the one and only and touchable garment of his “high office.”
The opposing button, by the way, we hear a lot in horror in church: Whatever
Happened to Authority? The question of those who always took their own
authority for granted. In fact, they were the very embodiments of
authority! – legal, political, religious, parental, educational, military,
industrial. Not any more! Authority is no longer established, entrenched,
unquestionable, unaccountable. Every kid who knows more than we about
computers is a long step ahead of us!
In this story Jesus no sooner enters the synagogue to preach, than astonishment
overcomes all who hear him! They never heard anyone speak like that before!
It has come to pass as Jeremiah 31 prophesies – God is no longer writing the letter
of law on stone -- externally to us. Rather, God is writing the spirit of
law directly upon our hearts! Each one of us comes to God and relates to God
for ourselves!
The authority they hear in Jesus – as contrasted with scribes and teachers of
law – comes not from the outside in but from the inside out. His presence
exudes authority. He will go on to teach, scandalously – “You have heard it
was said of old / But I say unto you!” – standing traditional thought and practice
upside-down.
Mark calls Jesus “teacher” again and again, but does not give us much of the
content of Jesus’ teaching – not the long Sermon on the Mount of Matthew, or the
many parables of Luke. Jesus would tend to say, it’s not about me!
It’s not about power to lord over others. The messiah is, there is no
messiah – and here I am anyway! Rather, it’s all about the prophetic
movement and mission of visions and voices challenging anything other, anything
less than the full promise of God’s reign of justice and peace on this earth.
Rather, it’s all about the Jubilee moment -- when time is fulfilled and those in
the presence of Jesus know with conversion, conviction, compassion, communion –
we have run out of time and excuses! There is no escaping this authority
–urgency, intensity, clarity, integrity.
We have no choice but to give him our lives – our deaths and our hopes forever!
Even, or especially our demonic spirits know they have been found out by
their “higher power!” Right in the midst of worship, perhaps the sermon, a
wild voice disrupts, distracts, disturbs everyone. How did this guy get in?
Why didn’t the ushers stop him? This is such a shame and embarrassment to
our guests! This is one man speaking in many parts – fragmented, perhaps schizophrenic
– What do you have to do with us? Do you come to destroy us? We know
who you are! Each one of us may be attuned as we hear this to that which cries
uncontrolled in ourselves –mostly contained by propriety but sometimes exposing
our very souls!
Jesus the preacher, the prophetic healer looks over the obvious fault and finds
the real need within us. He addresses not the whole person we often condemn.
Rather he goes to the demon inside. He knows we are all subject to our own
demonic possessions – perhaps for better and worse. Rita Nakashima Brock says
exorcists have to know their own demons. They have to be wounded healers –
understanding by their own experience vulnerability and the kind of internalized
oppression that plagues persons and whole peoples long after emancipation.
Exorcists, prophetic healers, recover their own hearts so they can address the hearts
of others. So they can be “radical” in analysis and in action – can go to
the “root” of the matter. Maybe that’s where Jesus has been all these years
between birth and baptism – not in seminary, not acquiring all the usual perks of
authority – but hanging out with his demons! Getting in radical touch with
his soul! How do you ask for that in a new pastor? Knows their demons?!
As we said in Spiritual Friendship learning together the other week, the only
real “credential” Jesus has to receive and to give is that of “friend” of all people
– namely, to “tax collectors and sinners.” It’s the “office” of friendship
with others that gets Jesus killed. It’s the “office” of friendship with us
Jesus grants us that last night before his dearth. We are no longer “slaves,”
he says, for slaves do not know what their master is doing. Rather, we are
“friends,” for Jesus has given us everything –to know as he knows, to speak as he
speaks, even to do as he does.
There is no one whose demons Jesus will not acknowledge, address, heal, and
set free – to follow him if they want to! For Jesus possesses, is possessed by
an authority more prophetic than presidential. He knows there is no easy
way out of our history. To exorcise it, to root out our demons, is not to
escape our history -- not to pretend it never happened – or we have “outgrown”
it once and forever.
We thank this gripping Inaugural poem of Elizabeth Alexander as we say it all
through our worship today. We are aware of “each one of our ancestors on our
tongue.” We are called to “repairing the things in need of repair” – and there are
so many of them! We are always in our own ways “trying to make music somewhere,”
anywhere! “We cross dirt roads and highways” – seeking “a place where we are
safe.” We know so “many have died for this day!” Many “who laid the
train tracks, raised the bridges” -- that need now repairing as well. Many
who built even Capitols and Presidential Palaces “to keep clean and work inside
of.” “Praise song for struggle!” Praise song for love! Let us
walk forth in that light. And, Amen!
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