Rev Timothy A Leitzke
A
And they
were going into
And
straightaway there was a person with an unclean spirit and crying out he was
saying, “What is it of you and me, Jesus Nazarite? Come to destroy us? I know
who you are, the holy one of God!”
And Jesus
rebuked him, saying, “Silence! And come out of him!”
And
convulsing him the unclean spirit with a great voice came out of him.
And they
were all amazed so that they sought among themselves saying, “What is this? A
new teaching with authority! And he commands the unclean spirits, and they hear
and obey him!”
The Word of the Lord
Homily
I had just
seen the movie The Two Towers three
times when I first translated this passage in seminary, so that is the story of
how the unclean spirit got the voice of Gollum. It certainly seems to fit. In The Lord of the Rings the young person
called Smeagol becomes ensnared and enticed by the evil, powerful, lost ring of
the Dark Lord, Sauron. The ring drives Smeagol to murder his brother, then
consumes him, twisting him into Gollum, a wicked shadow of the person he once
was. He is the most pitiable character in the story because it is not as though
he asked for any of this.
The man in
the synagogue that day that Mark describes didn’t ask for an unclean spirit. Unclean
here does not denote moral impurity but means some sort of bodily shortcoming.
Cripples, eunuchs, menstruating women, shellfish, and shaved faces were all
unclean. Such things required purification. Of course, if you were blind or
missing a limb you were perpetually unclean. So who knows what’s wrong with
this guy? He is, like Gollum and like you and me, somehow broken.
All of us
are in the grasp of Sin, stricken by things unclean for which we did not ask.
Jesus does not step onto the scene like some cosmic Mr. Fix-It; he comes with
authority. John the Baptist described Jesus as “The One Who is Stronger”, and
now Jesus is living up to that. Jesus commands the imaginations of Galilean
fishermen, making them disciples; he commands the crowd in the synagogue; and
he commands the unclean spirit. Jesus has authority. In a world that is unclean
and profane, Jesus is invincibly clean and holy. Jesus purifies and sanctifies.
We cannot do these things; God does them for us in Jesus. Jesus is God’s
authority in the world, calling us, teaching us, and showing us God’s good
news: “Sin is not in charge of this world; I am.” Jesus restores the man in the
synagogue to wholeness. He makes him right. Jesus teaches in the synagogue, not
just knowing the scriptures but understanding them and living them. Jesus, the
One Who is Stronger, reveals to us that God is in charge, God has arrived,
indeed God was always here, restoring us to wholeness.
Gollum
needed restoring to wholeness. He was cast out of the community. He was despised
by many. He was miserable in his sinfulness, consumed by his lust for the magic
ring, and haunted by the terrible crimes he had committed. There is no divine
grace in The Lord of the Rings, but
Friends of Christ grace is what Gollum needed. He need the One Who is Stronger,
the one who had authority even over the ring and Sauron. He needed the
reckless, self-giving love of God in Christ, and he needed that love manifest
in others. He needed to be brought back into fellowship. He needed people to love
him regardless of what he did. He needed forgiveness.
Friends of
Christ we are all Gollums, but we get God, because God gives us God’s self
freely. God draws us into this community of forgiveness, this family of faith,
this meal of God’s reign over all that is. God builds us up. God makes us
whole. God breaks the bonds of Sin and Death because God is stronger, and we
belong to God. Amen