Mark 1:21-28
January 29, 2012
Mary Hammond
The demon exorcism texts in the Gospels are not among my favorite stories. And there are many such accounts. Somewhere during the last couple years, I recorded these undated comments in my bible on this particular text: “For centuries, the mentally ill were treated as demon-possessed and/or were shut away. What does this healing mean? Do we change it to metaphor when it is not? But so many people have only limited earthly healing.”
Surely I was thinking of our daughter Sarah when I wrote this comment. Surely I was also thinking of countless other folks I know, love, pastor, and befriend, who face their own private demons.
A clear image from my teen years has reappeared in my memory during the past couple months. In high school, I accompanied the Choraliers, a 16-person singing ensemble which performed extensively throughout the wider community. Our most memorable yearly singing gig was our trip to the State Mental Hospital in Elgin, Illinois.
During the 1960′s, the mentally ill were “shut up” in places like this, removed from society. The room in which we performed was expansive, probably about the size of the First Church sanctuary minus the pews on the sides. Every few feet, there were metal beds with thin mattresses, covered with white sheets, and patients wearing white hospital gowns. Some lay on their beds, curled up in fetal balls. Some rocked back and forth in chairs. Some constantly mumbled, or erratically jerked. Some sporadically cried out. Each person seemed shut up in his or her own world.
We’ve come a long way dealing with the mentally ill in this country since the 1960′s. But we have not, by any stretch of the imagination, come far enough. Our prisons and city streets have replaced our mental hospitals far too often. The lingering, age-old stigma and label of “demon possessed” or “crazy” still lives on in many places throughout the world and even in the United States. The psychologically vulnerable are still frequently one loving family away from homelessness. When our daughter, Sarah, moved back home in November, 2010, that couldn’t have become more clear to Steve and me.
Gaining insight about my own faith journey as it interacted with the instantaneous healings recorded throughout the Gospels took a long time coming. My understanding was, in part, propelled by the day when one thin, white curtain separated the lives of ex-convict Louis Messina and adolescent Sarah Hammond–one thin curtain in the Emergency Room of Allen Memorial Hospital, as it was called in 1991. Louie was admitted for severe alcohol poisoning. Sarah was taken by ambulance from Wilder Hall, where she began having seizures from a severe electrolyte imbalance caused by acute anorexia. Two people I loved lay in those hospital beds, one thin curtain apart. A company of saints—many from this church–fought for their lives when neither could fight their own demons themselves.
In 1994-95, after I was diagnosed with non-Hodgkins lymphoma and began treatments, I could not read the Gospels at all for a whole year. It’s a good thing the church had two pastors, with Steve preaching in the Gospels every other week and me preaching in Job. The healing stories of the Gospels were simply too painful for me to bear—so quick, so instant, so clean, so clear-cut.
Jesus’ touch, word, or command was all that was needed. Was my life like that? Was Sarah’s? Was Louie’s? Was anyone’s I knew? Nice bible stories, I felt, but NOT MY STORY.
Until I wrote the “Slow Miracles Sermon” in 1995, chronicling the insights gained from these two beloved lives which collided in that one ER room separated by a thin, white curtain. Louie was back in prison by the time I got around to writing that sermon, but Virginia told him about it, and he wrote a song on it. I still remember the chorus–”Look at me, I’m a slow miracle, living proof of what God can do. Look at her, she’s a slow miracle, living proof of a living truth.”
Sarah’s untimely death on Thanksgiving Day does not change the past 21 years of that confession and fact, my friends. And Louie has been out of prison, ever since the prison stay during which he wrote that song.
You see, my life is characterized by ‘Job kinds of miracles’ more than ‘Jesus kinds of miracles.’ The ancient saint of the Hebrew scriptures named Job faces multiple losses in rapid succession. Through lament and protest, he stubbornly remains in dialogue with a seemingly silent God. Over the long haul, his vision–clouded by grief–is restored. His perseverance and faith are vindicated. Job’s story, my friends, is a slow miracle–the kind that comes through struggle and heartache; through stubborn authenticity, constant vigilance, and audacious prayer.
We face Jesus once again in this Gospel story of Mark. An interrupting spirit has hold of a man in the meeting place. It speaks to Jesus, not the man. And this is the way with such realities. The torment becomes so thick and omnipresent that it has its own personality and voice. Yet, there is a yearning heart and soul beneath that interrupting torment. It is to that heart and soul that the heart of God speaks in this story and continues to speak today.
Call that interrupting voice a demon, mental illness, an unclean spirit, a tormented presence, the darkness, depression–call it whatever you will–Jesus shuts it up and sends it packing. He instantly heals this man after, most likely, years of torment. Jesus heals him publicly—in time and space, in this life, not the next. The man is given a new chance to experience an integrated earthly life, profoundly different from the tormented life he had known for so long. We all know that this never happened here for Sarah, despite innumerable prayers, beloved community, and persevering love.
But there’s more to ponder than these two different endings to the stories of the man in this text and my first-born child. There’s a brazen claim by the Gospel writer that Jesus is in the habit of facing down the darkness and not letting it stand—in an ultimate way.
Hope is vaster than what we see with our human eyes. Baptist Peace Fellowship staff member, LeDayne Polaski, reminded me that God dwells outside our finite constructs of ‘chronos’ time and space, outside our sense of hours and days marking yesterday, today, and tomorrow. And our family marks the days so intensely in this period of fresh grief.
In God’s time which is beyond our sense of time, the Gospel confession of Jesus’ exorcism is this: the light will not be confined by the darkness.
Slow miracles, fast miracles, mysteries, paradoxes, and gaps between text and experience…All these are part of the journey we are called to as followers of Jesus. May God find us both faithful and tenacious of heart. Amen.