Mark 1:32-39

Sermons from Göttingen on the Internet
hg. von Ulrich Nembach und Johannes
Neukirch

By Walter Meyer-Roscher

The Sermon Text:

32 That evening, at sundown, they brought to him all who were sick or
possessed with demons.33 And the whole city was gathered around the door.34 And
he cured many who were sick with various diseases, and cast out many demons;
and he would not permit the demons to speak, because they knew him. 35
In the morning, while it was still very dark, he got up and went out to a
deserted place, and there he prayed.36 And Simon and his companions
hunted for him.37 When they found him, they said to him, “Everyone
is searching for you.”38 He answered, “Let us go on to the
neighboring towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also; for that is
what I came out to do.”39 And he went throughout Galilee,
proclaiming the message in their synagogues and casting out demons. (NRSV)

Dear Congregation,

I.

“Everyone is searching for you.” – yes, then! But today the
masses speak another language and the so-called Realists, who are fixated on
numbers, say: Increasingly fewer people are searching for him. They advise
churches to retreat from public view and into a niche in society. They advise
us to work inside the congregation, to aim the proclamation of the gospel at
the core members of the congregation, and to organize congregational life
exclusively for those who are already members and who want to continue to
belong. The church for insiders—an “exclusive society”!

Shall we permit ourselves to be influenced by numbers and by those who call
themselves Realists? Shall we lock up the dreams and hopes from earlier in our
memories? “Everyone is searching for you.” –is that really only
an illusion today?

II.

At the beginning of the ministry of Jesus the evangelist describes the
incomprehensible expectations of many sick people. Outstanding among those ill
people who seek him are those who are possessed by evil spirits. They are
hoping for healing from their possession, healing from the powers that control
them with destructive authority, that drive them one way and another,
disoriented, incompetent, incapable of life itself—or even also out of
their minds, having lost all sanity.

Here is something the Realists can’t convince us of: the conviction
that demon possession is in the last analysis a phenomenon of the past, and
that such things need not concern an enlightened society any longer. Possession
by a spirit who can destroy life and relationships; possession by a power that
influences all thought and action, that makes one person euphoric and robs
others of power and will—such things do happen today. The insane and
powerless—their number is certainly not decreasing. Those numbers are
growing at an alarming rate.

Günter Kunert has such persons in mind in his poem: those who are
controlled by the illusion that everything is possible and those who are sold
out to these powers and their illusions.

“We can’t hold them: this day, this life.
Cloth unravels and disappears.
Whatever happens, you seek meaning.
At least you give it a try.
Recognize this: We can not control ourselves
And we can find nobody like us gods.
And none who offers us any help.
We are left on our own bereft of grace.”

“Götterdämmerung” [Twilight of the Gods] is the title of
Günter Kunert’s poem. We have made gods of ourselves, he thinks, and
we can find nobody like us gods.

III.

To be like God—an ancient human dream. And how much we humans have
already accomplished, in order to reach the realization of this dream. The
dominion over nature and its laws has become reality. To create life, to guide
it, and to manipulate it—these are in the realm of the possible. Yes, we
can find nobody like us gods.

So grows faith in universal possibility, including faith in the possibility
that we can get our lives together and can develop humane relationships on our
own. That is an addiction that does not let us loose and drives us without
mercy.

But how does it happen that at the same time, the suffering of the
disenfranchised of our world takes the upper hand, that the misuse of power and
the illusion of possibilities demand so frighteningly many sacrifices? The
illusory feeling of “being like gods”—how quickly that changes
to a feeling of disorientation, of powerlessness, of resignation in those who
have fallen under the control of the powers and who on their own can no longer
pull themselves free. We cannot understand it. Kunert attempts to push the
question further and confesses, “We can not control ourselves and we can
find nobody like us gods.” At that point we stand angry over the outcome
of the illusion of possibility, which has already become possession. Woe to
those who deny or who stumble, who have mad a mistake! Woe to those who proceed
slowly when speed is called for! And then powerless rage, anxiety that makes
one sick, resignation that leaves all hope in ruins, can become
possession—by the spirit of the times, which drives them one way and
another, disorients them, making them incompetent, incapable of life itself.

Both are sick in their possession and need healing—both the movers and
the powerless who suffer under the doers.

“Recognize these,” writes Günter Kunert, “We can not
control ourselves And we can find nobody like us gods and none who offers us
any help. We are left on our own bereft of grace”—without grace
thrown back onto ourselves! If that is our future, then God help us!

We say it this way, we use this speech pattern in order to communicate our
anxieties and fears. And in this statement, “then God help us” hope
lights up—the hope in a God who meets us graciously.

IV.

“Everyone is searching for you”—not only then! Faith in
possibility working life becomes very quickly brittle, and then comes the
yearning—yearning for healing from the unhealthful spirits that can
destroy a life and tear apart the relationships in society. Then the yearning
grows for believable criteria of what it means to be human and for a life that
works—especially when facing the storm of problems or the pressure of a
multiplicity of demands and of insecurity.

“Everyone is searching for you” –and Jesus takes upon himself
the yearning of men and women for healing. The evangelist describes a picture
in which specific aspects of the work of Jesus are specially emphasized: the
openness with which he approaches people, without setting conditions for
healing and salvation; the readiness to go wherever someone is doing wrong and
another is torturing himself. He turns aside to everybody, the demon possessed,
the lost. His presence caused evil spirits to become quiet. This picture
reflects lordship that grows out of the consciousness that he has a divine
mandate. In addition, it hints at a deep inner security out of which Jesus
lives, out of which he speaks and works.

When the evangelist writes that Jesus even before the dawn of a new day that
comes to him with new demands seeks to be alone and to pray, then that includes
for him the experience of the nearness of God, concentration on what really
supports life, a fundamental trust that God leaves nobody bereft of help,
without grace with only oneself to depend upon.

“And we can find nobody like us gods and none who offers us any
help” writes Kunert.

“We are left on our own bereft of grace.” The evangelist offers a
different picture—the picture of the one who, following the divine
mandate, brings the gracious God to all, who wants to offer help to all—to
those who let themselves be forced incessantly forward by the powers and by the
illusory idea of the human possibilities of life and to those who are possessed
by anxiety that they cannot cope with the ungracious demands of life.

For Jesus those persons are and remain equally children of God. That’s
where their human worth lies, and on that foundation is built the worth of
their lives—independent of their successes or their failures, their power
or their weakness.

God never gives up on God’s children. God seeks them, God accompanies
them with divine grace even to the boundaries of life where we have nothing
left to hang on to, when everything sinks and disappears.

“Whatever happens, you seek meaning,” writes Kunert. You will find
it, says Jesus, when you trust yourself like a child to this Father and his
grace. Out of such inner security and out of the experience of grace grows
responsibility—a responsibility that recognizes the Creator as the Giver
of life and a concerned responsibility for one’s human fellows, for the
world.

The faith in the human possibility of the effective life has a flip side. It
recognizes no ultimate responsibility. For this reason the yearning for
trustworthy humanity grows, the yearning for healing from inhuman possession,
for salvation. In this situation the picture appears that the evangelist draws
of Jesus, his ever-present power to attract. “They brought to him all who
were sick or possessed with demons!” That is not only the memory of the
evangelist. They can come even today—all who seek healing from their
possession, from the forced belief that they can do everything on their own,
but also those who are left behind and are governed by the sickness of anxiety.
He is there for all. We are absolutely not left to ourselves without grace, but
rather we can trust ourselves to the grace of another—thanks be to God!

Amen

Walter Meyer-Roscher, Superintendent in Hildesheim
Translated by Bruce E. Shields, Emmanuel School of Religion,
Johnson City, Tennessee, USA