Presbyterian Church of Easton
Sermon Mark 1:39-45 "Encountering a Monster"
February 14, 2020
Today is Valentine’s Day and I would like to start with a love story. Sixteen years ago today I was scheduled to attend a committee meeting at the Pasadena Presbyterian Church in Pasadena, California. I had been invited to attend the meeting by a young Korean woman I had recently met. Her name was Grace.
Grace had invited me to this meeting because they were discussing an idea she had to start a ministry for international students. I was to attend the meeting because I had already agreed to volunteer for this ministry.
I wanted to learn a little more about what I was getting into. So I suggested to Grace that we meet for happy hour at a local seminary hangout operated by the Mccormiks and Schmidt's Restaurant across the street. My idea was that she could tell me about the ministry before the committee meeting over a couple of cheap burgers.
On the morning of Valentine’s Day, Grace called me with the news that the committee meeting was canceled. The chairman’s wife wanted him home for Valentine’s Day. And this gave me an idea. I had already made arrangements to meet Grace at Mccormick’s and Schmidt’s for some cheap burgers. So I told her that since the committee meeting was canceled, and we had more time, let’s go to the main restaurant and I will treat you to a nice meal. She agreed. And Grace and I had our very first date on Valentines’s Day sixteen years ago today. Let’s pray.
Holy Spirit, we ask that you enter our hearts and our minds this day to help us to understand what God is speaking to us through the Holy Scripture. Lift us up into the presence of the Father as worship today. And deliver our prayers to our savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
Today I will be completing my series of sermons on the early ministry of Jesus as recorded in the first chapter of the gospel of Mark. We have watched four fishermen be transformed, by the power of the gospel, into followers of Jesus. We have witnessed demons cast out by Jesus. And we have heard about Simon’s mother-in-law who was healed by the power of Jesus’ touch and began a life of service to other followers of Jesus. Today we will be following Jesus as he confronts a monster with the power of the Word of God.
Why does the horror genre of movies and books fascinate us so much? Why do we watch Frankenstein and Dracula on the silver screen or read Stephen King novels? I have to confess that I love Stephen King novels. I probably shouldn’t admit this as a pastor, but I think that I have read almost everything Stephen King has written. Why do we love these things so much? The reason is, I believe, that we see in monsters a little bit of ourselves.
Stephen King creates monsters by creating characters who are ordinary people like you or me and then, because of unusual circumstances, they become monsters. We are fascinated by this because it could happen to us under the right circumstances.
As we watch TV news or read the newspaper we are horrified by the people losing their jobs and their homes. And we realize that these people who have lost everything and many of whom now live on the streets are people just like us. A divorce, a health problem, the loss of a job, the foreclosure on a home, and suddenly we are monsters, living on the street, unclean, and not welcomed into polite society. We are frightened by the horror of homelessness, and yet we are fascinated by it because it could happen to us.
In ancient horror literature, a common monster was the leper. Now a leper is worse than anything Stephen King could invent. Lepers had contagious skin diseases. Two full chapters in the book of Leviticus were devoted to protecting the Hebrews from lepers. Every Hebrew mother taught her children to avoid lepers because their touch could be deadly. The law required lepers to have their hair a mess, their clothes torn, their upper lip covered, and to cry out “unclean, unclean” whenever they saw someone. And lepers were required to live in the wilderness, far from the city (Leviticus 13:45). Lepers were more frightening than anything Hollywood could dream of.
There is an ancient horror story about a leper in the book of 2 Kings. His name was Naaman and he was a great general of Israel’s enemy Aram. Naaman was truly an ancient monster frequently invading villages in Israel. He married a young girl his army had carried off as a slave after one of their numerous raids. Not only was Naaman a brutal general terrorizing the Israelites, he was also a leper.
One day his wife told him about a prophet in Israel named Elisha who might be able to cure his leprosy. So Naaman assembled his army, horses, and chariots and went to see this prophet. Elisha told Naaman to wash seven times in the Jordan, which, of course, made the general angry because he thought Elisha’s God would show far more respect and heal him on the spot. But Naaman’s wife urged him to follow the prophet’s advice and Naaman went down to the Jordan river. He dove into the water seven times and his leprosy was healed. Naaman proclaimed to everyone who would listen that the God of Israel was stronger than any other god.
And that brings us to today’s scripture reading. I am reading from my own translation of Mark 1:39-45.
Now Jesus was preaching and casting out demons in synagogues all over Galilee. Suddenly there was a leper. The leper should have stayed away and warned Jesus that he was unclean, but he came right at him, falling on his knees, and pleading with Jesus saying “If you want, you have the power to make me clean.”
Jesus’ stomach turned over at the sight of the leper. Then he did the unthinkable; he reached out his hand. The leper and Jesus touched each other. And Jesus said, “Yes that’s what I want, be cleansed.”
Suddenly, the leprosy was gone and the leper was cleansed.
And Jesus warned him, sternly, as he was sending him away to say nothing to anyone about what had happened. He was to go straight to the priest for an examination as proof of his cleansing as Moses had commanded. But the leper, as he was going to the priest, preached about Jesus to many people.
Jesus, now ritually unclean, was unable to return to the city. So he remained in the desert with the lepers, and people came to Jesus in the wilderness from everywhere.
So far in the book of Mark, we have heard about the first followers of Jesus, the four fishermen, the first evangelists of Jesus, the man with the unclean spirit, the first deacon of Jesus, Simon’s mother-in-law who was healed; and now the first preacher of Jesus, the cleansed leper.
Let me repeat this, the first preacher was a monster, a leper. Jesus healed him by laying his hand on him and making him clean. This still happens today. Preachers are sinners like everyone else. We have our own fears that were a few circumstances to change we could become monsters. We have the same fears as all of you. But we are touched by Jesus through the laying on of hands at our ordination. This touch makes us ritually clean and allows us to proclaim the good news that the kingdom of God has come near. Of course, we still have to pass examinations and submit to the authority of the church. But our passion is to preach and proclaim what Jesus has done for us to as many people as we can.
When Jesus touches us, you and me, he makes us clean by taking our uncleanliness upon himself. Jesus takes our sin into his sinless body. Jesus frees us from the wilderness by taking our place in the desert. This is the offer Jesus makes to his people. So this is the message preachers are to proclaim.
Each of us has now heard the proclamation by Jesus of the good news. This makes us followers of Jesus like those four fishermen. We have experienced the casting out of demons in Jesus’ name. This makes us evangelists of Jesus ready to tell others about the good news we have experienced. We have experienced healing from Jesus. This makes us ready, like Simon’s mother, to serve others who are in need. And now whatever we fear is cleansed away and we are now ready to proclaim to many others that the kingdom of God is near and extraordinary things are happening.
We have also learned from Mark a little about who Jesus is. Jesus was a preacher who made followers by proclaiming the good news. Jesus was an exorcist who had power over unclean spirits. Jesus was a healer who helped people suffering from illness. And now we see that Jesus is a prophet like Elisha with the power to cleanse away whatever we fear.
Jesus, therefore, is a superhero who slays the monsters within us. Like Batman or Superman, Jesus calms our fears. But Jesus is far more powerful than any of these fictional characters because we know something else about Jesus from the first chapter of Mark. We know that Jesus is the Son of God. Let’s pray.
Lord Jesus, we are troubled today by our fears of the monsters within us. Be with us as we wander in the desert. We ask that you cleanse us of our fears and slay the monsters that menace us. Set us free to proclaim to everyone we meet all that you have done for us. We pray that God’s kingdom will come. Amen.
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