January 28, 2024

Fourth Sunday after Epiphany Year B

Epiphany, Winnipeg

Mark 1:21-28

I have known someone with something that is now called Dissociative Identity Disorder, what was once called Multiple Personalities or Split Personality, and not so long ago it was just called being crazy. I knew this person who was one person on the outside but inside herself, she was many. So on one day she would be someone called Mary, and you could have easy, occasionally strange, but good conversations about life or faith or just small talk. Two days later you might run into her again and say “Hello, Mary,” and she might look you fiercely in the eye and say, “I’m Janice,” and would have nothing more to say. And she wasn’t kidding around. That day she was Janice, one other person who kind of inhabited her. Two voices she had, two lives in a sense, one of them was so quiet and kind and one was just so intense and angry…and hers was a hard life to live as these voices collided and shifted and rose and fell.

Every now and then she would go to a church in the neighbourhood and she would be “healed,” and told to throw away her medication because the unclean spirit had been driven out. One of those times she was found a few days later wandering outside on a winter night in her nightgown…and it was back to the hospital to get recalibrated and get the meds starting again to try to work some kind of balance between Mary and Janice.

“Just then there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit, and he cried out, “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God.” Did you notice what happened there? There’s one person with “an unclean spirit,” and that one person cries out, “What have you to do with us? Have you come to destroy us?” There’s one person calling out, “What do you have to do with us?” One person, whose voice cries out with so many voices.

Now Mary or Janice was not possessed by a demon, or at least not in some Hollywood or televangelist way. It’s just that the chemicals and electrical impulses and neural pathways were all out of whack and for some reason just could not be put back together.

On the other hand, a first-century man in a synagogue with an unclean Spirit isn’t just some poor soul with an undiagnosed mental illness. Maybe there is more going on in the world and inside us than just chemicals and electricity.

Whatever the reasons are for these things we can’t seem to control, there’s this story where Jesus meets those voices, the many inside the one, and for a time the chaos is stilled.

This story and the Many Voices in the One cuts close to home for me in a different way, and maybe for you too. There have been times, thankfully it doesn’t happen often anymore, when voices have kept me awake in the night. I’ll start awake at 2:15 a.m. and remember something that did not go at all well yesterday, and a strong voice inside will say, “You really blew that, Paul.” “Again.” Then another says, “No, you didn’t blow it, you were right, they were wrong. They always are.” And maybe I did blow it, or maybe they were just plain wrong, but when those voices just keep going and going you know nothing good comes of that. On another night one voice will bother me about something I said to a friend twenty-three years ago, and then another will stir up all kinds of fear about a meeting next week or a bill coming due, or, or…. All inside the one me there can be critical or angry or regretful or fearful voices. All at once. And if you’ve had nights like that, you know how much those voices just eat away, and bring you down, and wear you out. In the middle of the night, or on a bright sunny day.

“Just then there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit, and he cried out, “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God.” There’s one person with so many voices in the night or the middle of the day that criticize and cut.

And Jesus meets me, or you, and calls out those voices and says to them “Get out,” and says to me or to you or to whoever needs to hear, “Those voices don’t tell the whole story about you. You are loved so much more than those voices would have you believe.” And for a time, maybe just for a time, the chaos is put aside.

These unclean spirits, or these many voices that clamour for attention…It’s not just all about individuals with issues. It’s more than Pam and Janice with their personalities and voices that clash inside that one person. It’s more than a pastor or someone in a pew who has all these mixed messages inside. And it’s not just that lone struggling person in that synagogue community with Jesus.

It’s in the world around us.

There has always been a kind of unclean spirit, some would even call it demonic, that has kept people apart or torn people apart in some way. It’s easy to see; it’s all those ways that we’ve had for one to dominate another, whether we call it racism or sexism or ageism or any of the new unknown or unseen isms and phobias that might come along next. These are things that need to be called out and cast out but that we know cannot just be done away with with a worskshop or sensitivity training or even a law. Unclean spirits have a way of hanging on tightly.

There’s an unclean spirit in the ways we’re living together these days. We seem to be dividing against each other, and talking with each other less and talking about each other more. We see it all over, right? It’s an election year in the U.S. and you know there won’t be a lot of sitting down together to understand disagreements or work out divisions. There will just be two sides talking about how awful the other side is, like someone lying awake in the night remembering all the wrongs that someone has done…and we hope that it won’t tear the place apart. We have so many different voices in the world around us, in this one society or community where we live, but so often it seems to be me and the voices I agree with convincing ourselves that we’re right and the other voices are wrong. YouTube videos and Facebook memes have taken the place of people speaking and listening and understanding and working out a life together.

“Us” has become a way to divide and tear apart and put down them.

“And just then there was in their synagogue someone with an unclean spirit, and they cried out, “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God.” There’s one person calling out, one community or church or community or country, “What do you have to do with us?” One person, whose voice cries out with so many voices, and that one person is being torn apart.

And Jesus hears all that and acts, and speaks, and heals, and for a time maybe the chaos can be stilled.

Look around wherever you are – right here now or in your life out there -and keep your eyes open for events or situations where different voices are being heard and where people are coming together rather than being pulled apart. Maybe you’ll see it in your own living room or your workplace, or it might spring up suddenly in a lineup at Costco or a lineup at the food bank. We hope and we pray that we will see some kind of signs of this in our next door neighbour to the south and in our neighbours across the world and in our neighbours who holler at each other and put each other down in the House of Commons or the Legislature. Maybe you or I will see it in our own lives, in those times when we find ourselves being heard and also listening.

And when we see those things happening, we see and hear Jesus calling to the fighting of the voices and saying, “Be quiet, and get out,” and the chaos eases and the healing begins.

It’s a civilized, decent, respectable gathering at the synagogue. People are milling around a bit – they don’t all just sit there; it’s a bit like church but also a bit like a community centre – and there’s some reading of scripture, and prayers. Jesus is teaching too, and people are so impressed, but then while he’s holding forth someone with an unclean spirit speaks up and brings chaos to the room.

The ushers never get a chance to usher him to the door.

Nobody has time to pick up a phone and call the police.

Because Jesus hears him, and pays attention right away. And to all those voices that are tearing that man apart Jesus just says, “Be quiet, and get out of that beloved child of God.” And although it sounds so forceful – it’s not gentle - Jesus’ word casts out the “Us” when there should be just one. There was one who came into the synagogue in chaos, who was pulled in all directions by the voices, by the unclean spirit that tears apart and divides rather than mends and unites. That one person who arrived all torn and divided encounters Jesus, and they leave the scene mended, one, whole, and no longer torn apart.

That’s what Jesus does.

He might have to do it a lot. But that’s OK, because the healing call of Jesus outlasts the persistence of any unclean spirit.

And did you hear that other thing? “I know who you are, the Holy One of God.” That’s an interesting little pun, isn’t it? Jesus is the Holy One. Not the Holy Lots, or the Holy Many, but the Holy One. Who was himself broken, on a cross, and who was raised up, one and whole again, so that we will be made whole again, be made one, set free and following together.