“What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come here to destroy us? I know who you are – the Holy One of God.”
First, no, he hasn’t come here to destroy, but to save us. He’s come to destroy all evil, yes. But to save us. “Have you come here to destroy us?” is a question directed at Jesus by a raging, mad demon who knows his time is up. The demon is the one destroying the poor man he possesses by his ravaging nature. Yet, in the irony of ironies, he fears being destroyed by the Holy One of God. Jesus destroys demons, and saves us, the people he loves. He destroys the results of the sin of Adam, but saves those who turn away from the sin of Adam.
And second, “I know who you are – the Holy One of God.” At least the unclean spirit made an honest admission before being destroyed by Jesus, like the Patriots will do to the Philadelphia Eagles in the Super Bowl next week. This honest and correct admission of the unclean spirit is spoken out of fear. The sort of fear that sees before it, its own destruction. It’s all negative with unclean spirits. Their nature is fully corrupt.
Our honest and correct admission of Jesus is spoken, I pray, from faith and love, and not from abnormal fear. We believe in him because he promises a gift that will bring eternal joy to our souls first, and our bodies in the resurrection. This is what our faith is built upon. And we love him not only because he died for us – we love those who make great sacrifices for us, like parents and grandparents – but we love him also because he stands by us through thick and thin right now.
As a preacher, I have a slight hesitancy to present Jesus to you as a friend. But his friendship is a notable part of our relationship with him. A faithful friend is someone who stays with you through the good times and the bad, in sickness and in health. Christ does this for us, and I pray that over the length of our years, we come to know this intimately.
My hesitancy is caused by our seeing Jesus only as a friend; a nice guy who cares about us; a man who spoke some friendly words of teaching; healed a few sick people; and was put to death by some pretty bad people. Jesus is a friend, as the possessed man in the Gospel comes to know. Jesus is there for him. But he’s more than a friend; he is God and Savior of the world.
As our Lord begins his ministry early in Mark’s Gospel, the first miracle that comes to us through this Gospel writer is one of destroying that which is unclean. This is how he baptizes our world. The man with the unclean spirit is the one who claims the center of our attention in this story, and much less so the demon. There’s a grave danger today that many souls are offering their attention to the ways of the demons, as they play with fire, and not to the cleansing. Our Christian focus is to be on the man who is healed by the power of God, and less on the power of a wayward spirit who loses the battle in the end.
The time that the unclean spirit spent in possession of the man who was bedeviled by it, was limited time. If our attention remains true to Christ, and not offer any degree of allegiance to their evil ways, any unclean spirits become temporary. Our attention is directed toward the saving power of God; towards the positive, the good; the loving; the forgiving. This first healing in Mark’s Gospel is like the first explicit experience of the Sacrament of Reconciliation in all the Gospels. The unclean man is made clean by the power of Christ. And here it is; the first spiritual and physical message of Jesus in his opening encounter with the crowds after beginning his public ministry. It’s not by chance or happenstance that our Lord’s forgiveness is first up. Forgiveness is the leadoff batter to many other virtues to follow in the lineup.
He came to fix a broken world. And the first fix that God had in mind was to fix the sin of Adam and Eve. The only way to fix that debacle in the Garden is to clean that which is unclean, and destroy the unclean. Jesus sees not only an unclean spirit controlling the life of a man that Jesus loves and created. He sees the effects of the Garden of Eden event in that mad spirit before him, and does what he does best; he runs it over with the Mack Truck he drove down from heaven. He flattens that spirit, like the Patriots are going to flatten the Eagles. I would have let Jesus borrow my UPS truck for such a noble purpose.
As I speak so much about he unclean spirit here, our attention is centered more on the man made clean by the touch of God. Aren’t we always happy to see someone recover from any dreadful condition? The loving touch in this story is the spoken word, “Quiet! Come out of him!” As long as our hearts are given to him, the Lord doesn’t rebuke us like that. He calls us to continual repentance for sure. But he doesn’t rebuke us in this way. His love is kind, gentle, and patient, as long as our hearts are given to him. We are not the unclean spirit; we are the man he healed and made whole. This incredible gift of being made whole is already partly realized in the present, if we so desire it. It will be fully known after we go through the Pearly Gates.
The first action of Jesus in Mark’s Gospel is the action of cleaning the unclean in his path. The heavenly tornado. Just like the Patriots are going to clean up the Eagles. Get out of the way!
He offers to us the clean. The shiny soul. The bright heart. All that is good for us. The first action of Jesus is a profound act of love. And for this we give thanks to our Lord and Savior.