Mark 1:21-28 NRSV

My first-grade teacher, Mrs. Banks, will always be remembered as one of my favorite teachers. And it is not because she had such a cool last name or that was one of my very first teachers. It is also not because of the wonderful lessons that she taught me. Because, the truth is, I do not remember a single lesson. Mrs. Banks will always be remembered as my favorite teacher, because during that school year when I spent some time in the hospital to have my tonsils removed, she came to see me. She came to my hospital room and brought me cards hand-made by my classmates with construction paper.

It is not the words of the teacher that I fondly remember today. I remember her actions.

Mark writes that people in the synagogue were amazed at the power of Jesus’ teaching. “They kept asking one another: ‘What is this? It’s a new teaching with authority!’” But notice that Mark does not mention any words. There is no mention by Mark of even a hint of the content of Jesus’ lesson or even one point from his sermon. For Mark, it is not the words, but the authoritative action of the teacher that is important. Perhaps this is what made Jesus’ teaching so “new.”

Throughout Mark’s gospel, Jesus is continually identified by Mark using the word, “teacher.” And we are quick to learn that Jesus is a different kind of “teacher.”

In chapter four, Mark says that the “teacher” stills a storm. In chapter five, the “teacher” raises a dead girl to life.

In chapter six, the “teacher” feeds a hungry crowd.

In chapter nine, the “teacher” cures an epileptic.

 In chapter eleven, the “teacher” curses a fig tree.

And here in our text this morning, the “teacher” is the one who exorcises a demon in the synagogue. Jesus is a different kind of teacher, an authoritative teacher, because Jesus is continually putting the Word of God into action. Jesus is continually on the move, working and reworking, creating and recreating, restoring, renewing, reviving, healing, saving, transforming, acting.

Although, we modern, well-educated, well-informed folks who believe in psychology and science would rather ignore this demon in our story, I do think it is important for us to notice the location of this demon in our gospel lesson this morning. It’s not in all those places that some would expect to find demons today. This demon is sitting on a pew. I do believe that the sad reality of this fragmented world is that evil is real and evil is present and evil is personal and evil is experienced in all places, even in the church, sometimes, especially in the church.

I believe the church is afflicted with a number of demons today, but the one that perhaps concerns me the most is this demon of “defeatism.”

Defeatism: We have too many people in the church who have just accepted the evil in this world as normative. We’ve given up that things in this world can get better, that we as a people can do better, be better, or in other words, we’ve stopped believing that “demons can be exorcized.”

People leave church on Sunday to show up at the polls on Tuesday for an unstable politician who brazenly look into the camera and stokes fear, xenophopia, misogyny, and racism. The gap between the super rich and the super poor in our world continues to widen; women and transgendered people are denied healthcare; the poor are not given living wages; public education is undermined; affordable housing is not available; the environment continues to suffer; wars continue to wage; gun violence is everywhere, and we in the church sit back and say that there’s just nothing we can do about it. “This is just the way things are.” “It is what it is.” “This is the new normal.”  Or worse, we say something like: “Thank God the Lord is coming back soon.”

Some in the church actually have the audacity to call this defeatism, “faith”; instead of calling it what it really is: “demonic.”

I believe the point Mark wants us to hear is that this new, unprecedented teaching of Jesus has the authoritative power today and takes authoritative action today over the evil that afflicts our world. Mark wants us to know that although evil surrounds us, although we are tempted to believe that things are only going to get worse, a teacher is coming, and he is coming not with mere words, but with authoritative, imminent action today for a more just, more equitable and more peaceful tomorrow.

When this teacher comes and teaches us that there is hope, he is not just “whistling in the dark” or “grasping at straws.”  He is not coming on some “wing and a prayer” “wishing upon a star.” He is not coming with mere words and tiresome clichés. He is coming taking authoritative action.

The teacher does not come with a mere history lesson of God’s past actions but comes beckoning us to see what God is actively doing in our world today and will do in our world tomorrow.

As one of my favorite preachers, the late John Claypool has said, Jesus comes teaching us that our faith is and has always been “a faith of promise; never a faith of nostalgia. Our faith is always looking forward; never backward.”

Our faith never sulks, pouts, or grumbles for the good old days, but always marches for, works for, fights for, and anticipates good new days.

When someone comes to see me who has just been diagnosed with cancer or another dreadful disease; or has just lost their job, their income; or has just lost their spouse to death, or worse, to separation or divorce; or has been afflicted in any number of ways; and I say to them “it is going to be ok,” I am not simply saying “cross your fingers” and “hope for the best,” or even saying something like “there’s a light at the end of the tunnel.”

I am saying with the authority of God, the creator of all that is, the One who has been revealed in Holy Scriptures and in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, that things are going to be better.

Because our faith that is rooted in the Holy Scriptures is one that has always, and will always, draw us into better days.

When God first approached human beings, it was never from behind (“Hey you, turn around, come back here”), but it was always from out ahead, out in the future, promising, beckoning.

God came to Abraham and Sarah in their old age with a promise. God came promising that they would one day father and mother a nation. And you know something? Abraham and Sarah did the very same thing that some of you do when I tell you that things are going to be ok. They laughed. They scoffed: “We are much too old to have any future.”

God came to Moses showing him that he would lead Israel into the Promised Land. And Moses responded the same way some of you do, the same way Abraham and Sarah responded: “Nah; not me!  You know that simply don’t have what it takes to have such a future.”

But we know the rest of the story, don’t we? We know the rest of their stories, but we also know the rest of some of our own stories. No, Abraham, Sarah and Moses, nor any of us, had what it takes, but thank God that God did. And God acted. We look back at our afflictions, where we have been, and how far we have come, what we have gained through the storms, and we say something miraculous like, “If I could go back and change anything in my life, I don’t believe I would change a thing.”

This is why we point to our God in a very different manner than people of other faiths point to their God. When we are asked: “Where is your God?” we should never say “Back there,” or “in here,” or even “up there.” Rather we should point straight into the future and say: “My God is out there, pulling me into a better tomorrow!”

This is the teaching that Jesus puts into action, and this is the teaching that he calls all of us to put into action.

It is why we make a commitment to teach our children the stories of faith through Worship and Wonder. It is what compels us to help prepare impoverished children for kindergarten. It is what propels us to volunteer at Park View Mission. It is what drives us to join a movement like One Home One Future.

It is what propels some of you to volunteer at the hospital, visit a nursing home, send a card, or make a phone call to someone who is hurting. And hopefully it is what has brought you to be a part of this church, this movement for wholeness in our fragmented world, this blessed place of love and inclusion and it is what will send you out to be a blessing in all places.

For our God is a God of promise—A God of hope who is made known more in actions than in words.

I believe this explains the conversation I had with a colleague who was under the care of hospice just days before her death.

She talked about her life. She talked about how good God had been to her in the past. She talked about her service through the church alongside her husband. Then she began to talk about her present situation and about the cancer that had returned and had spread throughout her body. She talked about her pain. She said she knew that she had days and not weeks left on this earth. She talked about how difficult her death was going to be for her family, for her husband and children. Then she said with this special smile that I will never forget, “But I’m fine! I am going to be fine!”

She was going to be fine because her God, whom she knew through her teacher, Jesus Christ, had never approached her from behind. But always from out ahead, out in the future, always promising, always beckoning, always acting, transforming, renewing, restoring, resurrecting. Her God was never back there, somewhere in the distant past, but her God was out there, always assuring her that her best days of living, her best days of life, were ahead of her.

In what she knew to be her last few days on this earth, she had miraculously been taught to say, “I’m fine. I’m going to be fine.”

Aren’t we all?