Sermon for 10/10/1999, 19th Sunday after Trinity, from Mark 1:32-39
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