In the Company of the Upright

I Corinthians 8:1-13 Mark 1:21-28; Psalm 111

Psalm 111

¹ Praise the Lord ! I will give thanks to the Lord with my whole heart, in the company of the upright, in the congregation.

² Great are the works of the Lord , studied by all who delight in them.

³ Full of honor and majesty is his work, and his righteousness endures forever.

⁴ He has gained renown by his wonderful deeds; the Lord is gracious and merciful.

⁵ He provides food for those who fear him; he is ever mindful of his covenant.

⁶ He has shown his people the power of his works, in giving them the heritage of the nations.

⁷ The works of his hands are faithful and just; all his precepts are trustworthy.

⁸ They are established forever and ever, to be performed with faithfulness and uprightness.

⁹ He sent redemption to his people; he has commanded his covenant forever. Holy and awesome is his name.

¹⁰ The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom; all those who practice it have a good understanding. His praise endures forever.

Mark 1:21-28

²¹ They went to Capernaum; and when the sabbath came, he entered the synagogue and taught. ²² They were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes. ²³ Just then there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit, ²⁴ and he cried out, “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God.” ²⁵ But Jesus rebuked him, saying, “Be silent, and come out of him!” ²⁶ And the unclean spirit, convulsing him and crying with a loud voice, came out of him. ²⁷ They were all amazed, and they kept on asking one another, “What is this? A new teaching—with authority! He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him.” ²⁸ At once his fame began to spread throughout the surrounding region of Galilee.

I Corinthians 8:1-13

¹ Now concerning food sacrificed to idols: we know that “all of us possess knowledge.” Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. ² Anyone who claims to know something does not yet have the necessary knowledge; ³ but anyone who loves God is known by him.

⁴ Hence, as to the eating of food offered to idols, we know that “no idol in the world really exists,” and that “there is no God but one.” ⁵ Indeed, even though there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth—as in fact there are many gods and many lords— ⁶ yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.

⁷ It is not everyone, however, who has this knowledge. Since some have become so accustomed to idols until now, they still think of the food they eat as food offered to an idol; and their conscience, being weak, is defiled.

⁸ “Food will not bring us close to God.” We are no worse off if we do not eat, and no better off if we do. ⁹ But take care that this liberty of yours does not somehow become a stumbling block to the weak. ¹⁰ For if others see you, who possess knowledge, eating in the temple of an idol, might they not, since their conscience is weak, be encouraged to the point of eating food sacrificed to idols? ¹¹ So by your knowledge those weak believers for whom Christ died are destroyed. ¹² But when you thus sin against members of your family, and wound their conscience when it is weak, you sin against Christ. ¹³ Therefore, if food is a cause of their falling, I will never eat meat, so that I may not cause one of them to fall.

The Sermon

His first act of healing, according to Mark, was to restore someone’s physical, mental, spiritual, emotional integrity. How appropriate that Jesus’ first act of healing, according to Mark, takes place in the middle of a gathering of the people of God for worship.

They were in Capernaum on the sabbath, and Jesus was teaching in the synagogue.

And a man with an unclean spirit shouted out, “What do you want with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God.”

That demon voice was the first voice to say that about Jesus. And Jesus said, “Be silent, and come out of him!”

And at his the unclean spirit, convulsing the man and crying with a loud voice, left him.

Later would come the feeding of the five thousand, and healing the woman with a hemorrhage, and giving sight to the blind man, and all the many others. But Jesus’ first act of healing, according to Mark, was to restore someone’s physical, mental, spiritual, emotional integrity.

For the man in the synagogue, it was called an unclean spirit, and it recognized Jesus for what he was—the Holy One of God—before anyone else had made that connection. And Jesus will spend the next eight chapters of Mark healing people and then telling them, “Don’t say anything about this to anyone.”

For some reason, he is not ready, for the longest time in Mark, to let people talk about him. It’s like he wants people to listen to his teaching and learn about God’s will for all to have abundant life, and not be distracted by the fact of his unspeakably amazing presence. And right off the bat, you and I recognize it, and the demons recognize it, but when the unclean spirit says, “I know exactly who you are,” Jesus says, “Be silent!”

For right now, for some reason, Jesus is not calling attention to himself, only to the message he brings. It's not about him, he seems to be saying, but about the One who sent him, and what that One wants for all of our lives. It’s about overcoming the things that make us unhealthy, less than whole, less than fully free and fully human.

The Bible calls them unclean spirits. We have different names for them, enlightened names: psychoses, illnesses, addictions; confusion, personal issues.

However you identify these things, they keep us from being our true selves—created by the God who is love, made for truth and beauty, these things get into us and cause us to be less than who we were created to be.

In life, we will all do battle with the pollutants and the weaknesses that plague us, that sometimes only we ourselves really know.

It was in the synagogue, the house of worship, where this man with the unclean spirit found healing and hope and restoration.

Some come to the sanctuary and find the strength to overcome that which leads them astray, and to embrace wholeness again, from someplace deep inside.

Some find our healing in the house of worship through a genuine, overwhelming encounter with the living God.

And some find it in God’s house from one another: through the support of the community, the people of God together. We can help each other on the way, and in a real way, the way Jesus did: not with trite or meaningless rituals or abstract ideas about what’s good or not, particularly when that means we condemn something in public but it’s exactly what we do in private.

You know what they say the difference is between a Baptist and a Presbyterian: a Baptist will say hello to you at the ABC store.

That’s funnier in places where it’s assumed that if you go to church, you don’t drink—wink, wink. But I’ll bet those aren’t the only places where people condemn something in public, but in private, it works just fine for them.

In Corinth, there were church members who had been liberated by the good news of Jesus Christ. They had heard of his forgiveness, his salvation, his redemption. And they reveled in their liberation. In fact, they were so confident in their newfound knowledge of God that it did not bother them at all to go into the temples of other small-g gods, idols, where animals had been sacrificed to those other gods, and they, the Christians, would join in the sacrificial feasts where they could eat that meat.

Why? Because they could.

The way they justified it was: “Look, all of us who are doing this are not ignorant about what we’re doing; we possess knowledge. And that knowledge is the knowledge of God: we understand that no idol in the world really exists. These temples were built by our neighbors who believe in these idols, but we know those idols aren’t real; they have no power whatsoever because they don’t really exist. There is no God but one.

And furthermore, we know that it’s the blood of Christ and the grace of God that have bought our salvation; we understand that there is nothing we can do that is so bad that it forces God to have to condemn us; nor is there anything we can do that’s so wonderfully good and obedient that it forces God to have to give us salvation and eternal life. So whether or not we eat this food is not what’s going to determine whether or not we get into heaven.

“So, all things being equal, those of us in the Corinthian church who have understood all this knowledge feel like, why not? You think everybody in Corinth has bacon for breakfast and a hamburger for lunch and ham or chicken or beef or lamb for supper every night?

Meat was a rare privilege, a delicacy. Most meals consisted entirely of grains, and maybe a little dairy once in a while for the fortunate. But mainly it was breads and cereals, the bottom level on the food pyramid.

So, hey, if the people in the temples where they sacrifice to idols have some meat to share, come on, Christians! Let’s eat!

The problem was: it looked, to some of the other church members, like by eating that meat, in those temples, they were kind of saying that, from time to time, if it feels good, it was all right to make sacrifices to idols.

And so imagine the weaker church members, those who are on the borderline, let’s say, the borderline of temptation, of not really knowing completely what it means to follow God and trust Jesus.

They started to think, well, these are smart people who I know from church. Why not sacrifice to an idol once in a while? Maybe that can help fill in the gaps that I’m afraid God isn’t quite going to cover for me.

In other words, if it’s all right for those church people to go into those other temples, maybe we could do that too. Maybe what I find in there will even help me deal with the woundedness that I walk around with all the time.

Jesus healed someone in the sanctuary. We in the church have a similar kind of power: we can help someone find healing, or we can hurt someone. That’s why when we have communion, we don’t use alcohol. Can you imagine being an alcoholic, and having the server at the table of God saying, “Come on…one little drink won’t hurt you…”

And particularly when there are a lot of people coming “back” to church, sometimes learning for the first time what it means to be committed to following Christ, our actions speak a thousand words, and they’re important words.

If you are a church member, but publicly say things out there that you wouldn’t want to say in the sanctuary, then others who are learning from you what it means to follow Christ are learning, “Well, we just say that nice stuff in church, but it doesn’t really matter.”

If you’re a church member in name but are not personally invested in your church, I tend to think that’s between you and God; it certainly isn’t for me to judge you for your motivations or your abilities. But if a new member or a non-member or a visitor or a child sees you nodding and smiling during stewardship season, but not trusting God enough to commit your resources, that’s going to say to that person, “Hey, when it comes down to it, this is a scary economy; Preacher can give ten per cent if he wants to, but I think God wants me to hold onto everything I’ve got.” In other words, when we say we trust God, we don’t really mean it.

If you are a church member in name, but don’t do anything to participate in the ministry and work of the church, others for whom you may be the only Bible they ever read see that and get the message: “Well, at Easter time, we talk about how he died on the cross for me; but it doesn’t really mean that much.”

Paul says, the issue isn’t the meat. It’s what it says to your sister or brother in Christ, and what it may do to their faith, when, even if you think you can get away with it theologically, your actions are leading yourself and others away from God.

God gives the healing. But we can help each other in our living.

We need God, and God has given us each other. So to need God is to need each other, and to need each other is to admit that we are not complete alone.

That’s why we worship together every Sunday morning—it’s not about the attendance record, it’s about being there for each other when we worship God.

It’s why we break bread together, why we work and serve the ministries of the church together, why we walk the sometimes tricky path of human life and faithful life together.

We need each other.

I will give thanks to the Lord with my whole heart, in the company of the upright, in the congregation.

How appropriate that Jesus’ first act of healing takes place in the middle of a gathering for worship, the gathering of the people of God.

Keith Grogg

Carolina Beach Presbyterian Church

Carolina Beach, NC

February 1, 2009