"Saved by Love"

Mark 1:21-28
February 1, 2009
The Fourth Sunday after Epiphany

Preached at Kingston Road United Church by the Rev. Richard C. Choe

* * *

They went to Capernaum; and when the sabbath came, he entered the synagogue and taught. They were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes. Just then there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit, 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.’ But Jesus rebuked him, saying, ‘Be silent, and come out of him!’ And the unclean spirit, throwing him into convulsions and crying with a loud voice, came out of him. 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.’ At once his fame began to spread throughout the surrounding region of Galilee.

* * *

Saved by love.

There was a man who had seven different masks. He wore one for each day of the week. He would cover his face immediately as soon as he got up in the morning. He would then get dressed and go to work. He lived without ever showing his true face.

One night, while he was sleeping, a thief stole all his masks. When he woke up and realized what happened, he ran out of the house to look for his masks. His neighbours saw him running up and down the street cursing the world. He spent the entire day looking for the thief and his masks, but to no avail. Desperate and inconsolable, he broke down. No one seemed to be able to comfort his loss.

A woman passing by stopped and asked him, “What’s the matter, my friend? Why are you crying? He looked up and answered, chocking back his tears, “They stole my masks and with my face exposed like this, I feel so vulnerable.” “Take comfort from me,” she said to him, “I have always shown my face from the day I was born.”

He looked at her face for a long time and saw that she was beautiful and confident. The woman bent down, smiled at him and wiped away his tears. For the first time in his life, the man felt the softness of a caress on his face.[i]

Like the man with the seven masks we, too, struggle with a fear of showing who we really are to those around us. “What would people see in me? What if they don’t like what they see in me? What if I don’t measure up to their expectations?” These questions of “what ifs” diminish us and yet we continue to struggle with them. So we show others about what we want others to think we are – the external and superficial things. And for some of us, the masks we wear eventually define and confine our identity.

Growing up for many of us often means learning to cover and hide our true self with masks of what Carl Jung called persona –“the social self resulting from our efforts to conform to the social, moral and educational norms of our milieu.”[ii] The word persona is derived from a Greek word prosopon – meaning the mask actors wore to portray a character.

Our fear of showing our true self also affects the way we see others. Our fears prevent us from seeing others as who they really are. When we carry our preconceived notions and prejudices, we encounter “our projections of what we think people are” rather than their true selves. We project our fears – the things that make us unwell and unbalanced – to those we meet. It is true that we are who we meet – and we meet who we are.

And yet, there is a sense of sadness within us that no one seems to really understand who we really are. We long to connect with our true self and discover who we really are. There is a deep longing in us to be able to see and connect authentically with those we encounter in life.

The Church is no exception in struggling to understand who we really are, who others are, and who God calls us to be as community together. “When you look for it, you will find it.” Dr. Hazel Bigby, one of my mentors, advised me when I was about to intervene in a crisis that was destroying a congregation. She shared her wisdom that there is a tendency for people to project their fears onto those who are in conflict with them. And that individuals experiencing crisis often experience their own fear as the reality of the entire community. Hazel reminded me that a self-fulfilling prophesy stemming from fear was often the primary cause for diminishing congregations and individuals within from being whole.

What diminishes us as a congregation? How do we discern together who God wants us to be as church?

“Be silent, and come out of him!” Jesus commanded an unclean spirit to be silent and to leave the man. Jesus healed the man by emptying him of the unclean spirit that diminished and limited him from being whole. Jesus healed the man by confronting the spirit that prevented him from being whole. Jesus saw beyond the man’s external self. By placing this story as the first public ministry of Jesus, the Gospel writer Mark emphasized that healing – removing things that diminish people from being whole – was the priority of Jesus’ ministry.

For the Gospel writer Mark, to be fully human is to be able to experience authentic connection with God and with one’s neighbours as beloved. To experience life anything less than whole is to experience an unclean spirit within. According to Mark Jesus restored a man on the Sabbath to become whole again by commanding the unclean spirit to leave him. Healing is about restoration. It is about restoring us to reconnect with God and our neighbours as beloved. Healing begins when we are confronted with truth and empties us of feelings and ideas that confine us and disconnect us from God and our neighbours. It is about reconnecting with our true self – the self who is loved and the self who loves. Each healing moment is an experience of God’s presence.

Healing of our relationships – restoration of our relationships – begins when we see who we really are as the beloved of God. Being church together is about experiencing healing and living out our conviction that God loves all of God’s creation. Being church is living out that proclamation in and through our actions.

We gather here to witness and to celebrate the baptism of Abigail Ross Hewitt, a daughter of Tanis and Christopher.

Baptism is an event through which we affirm our belief that Abigail is a beloved child of God and that she, along with all of us here, is called to love herself and the rest God’s creation. It is also a time of God calling us to be rid of the “unclean spirits” within us and put down the masks we wear that block us from being fully human. The baptism of a child is also a time of “remembering” how our face was once bare, uncovered, authentic. It is a moment of remembering to live as fully as God intended us to be.

Reinhold Niebuhr, a theologian, wrote the following words:

Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime;
therefore, we must be saved by hope.
Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense
in any immediate context of history;
therefore, we must be saved by faith.
Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone;
Therefore we are saved by love.[iii]

It is with hope that we continue to work together to build a community where we can uncover our true selves. It is with faith that we connect with individuals within our faith community to become whole together. It is with love that we extend our hands with individuals and communities in our neighbourhood and the rest of God’s beloved in building a world that cherishes everyone as beloved.

We are indeed saved by love that uncovers us. We are indeed saved by love that heals and restores us as we encounter people soul to soul. May we continue to be saved by hope, faith and love.
Amen.

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[i] John Monbourquette, How to Befriend Your Shadow: Welcoming Your Unloved Side (Ottawa: Novalis, 2001), 36.
[ii] John Monbourquette, How to Befriend Your Shadow, 37.
[iii] Reinhold Neibuhr, The Irony of American History in Sam M. Intrator & Megan Scribner, eds., Leading from within: Poetry That Sustains the Courage to Lead (San Francisco: A Wiley Imprint, 2007), 15.