Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany and some thoughts for the annual meeting post 2020

 Scripture: Mark 1:21-28

Our scripture readings this morning share a common question: how to live as God desires? To help us understand how to live as God desires, the readings begin by describing what it looks and feels like to not live as God desires, to go against what God hopes for. Going against God’s desires looks like demons, it looks like eating food that creates the conditions for food injustice, it looks like doing things that create the conditions for racism, poverty, hunger, and other things that cause systemic disparity in the world. Many of us contribute to the problems of the world without even knowing we are doing so. These are our demons. 

Let’s reflect a bit on who God is and how we know what God desires:

Scripture tells us that in the beginning of creation God existed. Who is God? God is known as the source of all creation, the energy source, the creative source, the ultimate Being of life, however one depicts what that means. 

So, in the beginning there was God and some say there was a void, a vast expanse of nothingness. Others say there was God and this mass of swirling chaos. Regardless, God as creative Being has always existed as this force of creativity - causing creativity to happen. Let’s say that all creation poured forth from God’s imagination. At first what God imagined might have been, like any creative process, a bit chaotic, unorganized, random. But as God considered the creation, God began to organize the chaos, separating the mass of chaos, or pulling from the void, land from the water, the sky from the sun, the stars and the moon, the people from the animals. In the process of organizing and creating order, a piece of that randomness, a particle of chaos  or a remnant of the void, remained. That remnant serves as a creative energy which can bring inspiration or can bring chaos or annihilation. 

God organized the chaos using God’s Word, expressing God’s self into creation. God’s creative energy that emits from God’s Word enables a force of power, the Holy Spirit, to activate creation and give creation the capacity to sustain its creative energy. But, like all creative processes, there is also a shadow side, the other side, the side that tries to pull creation back into chaos, back into nothingness, back into a state that resists God. 

The demons in our scripture reading are the manifestation of the negative side of that creative remnant. Demons, in scripture,  are known as spiritual beings who’s motivation is to pull creation back into chaos or back into nothingness because for the demons, working against God and God’s creative power,  is to restore what feels right and normal to them, the abyss, the void, the chaos. The demons want annihilation and death, not life and health. This is the story of life,  the tension between life and death, between hope and despair, between good and evil, between God and the forces of chaos. 

Human beings have created systems of philosophy, knowledge and awareness including religions, that give us direction to navigate between hope and despair, between life and death, between God and chaos. The forces of chaos sometime work within the systems humans have created seeking to confuse us. I have often said  that the closer one gets to living as God desires, the more forceful the energy of chaos becomes. Seminary students experience this as they come closer to ordination - road blocks and challenges arise. Churches experience this as they come closer to living as God desires, to living out their purpose in the world - circumstances become challenging, Nations encounter this as they start to live as God desires - people arise that try to force society back into chaos and disorder. 

How do we know if we are working and living as God desires or falling for the creatures of chaos, the demons if you will? Again, scripture gives us guidance: As God did in the beginning and throughout time, God is working to bring order out of chaos, to create or restore wholeness, for health and well being, for hope, for equity for all. God is always working against the chaos, against the demons that cause systems of oppression to rise up in human society - against racism, against poverty, against hunger, against every way that one kind of people tries to have power over another. And how does God do this? God does this through God’s expressive Word activating people - through the incarnation and the teachings of Jesus and power fo the Holy Spirit - God works through us. 

In our Gospel reading this morning Jesus heals a man possessed by demons. He causes the demons to leave the man. He does this by naming them. Jesus has power over the demons because he names them. We can gain power over the systems of oppression in our lives and the world by naming them for what they are and then working to dismantle them as they rise up in each of us and in the world around us. We name them and then we work to dismantle the conditions that cause disorder in the first place - the conditions that created racial disparity, food insecurity, pollution, and economic disparity and all the other conditions that cause systems of oppression and suppression. We do this by working creatively to bring about order instead of inciting chaos. 

Christ Church in Dearborn has lived for 154 years. Longer than many congregations in this country. We’ve lived through economic collapse, through two world wars, the Spanish flu pandemic, and  the Great Depression. Now we are living through another pandemic and ongoing racial tensions as we come to grips with centuries of systemic racism. Christ Church has lived this long because we have been able to adapt. We’ve focused ourselves on our common life in God, on our faith and the teachings of Jesus. The last few years we have gained clarity on what our purpose is now, for this time and place. This clarity is not an entirely new thing, rather it is an evolving reality of who we have been becoming for many years. Henry Ford first named it when he thought that Christ Church should be a community centered church. And for many decade we were that. Now with the shifts of time and place and the influence of the Holy Spirit, we are evolving into an intercultural community center that houses two worshiping congregations and other groups like Creating Hope International that reflect our intercultural connection and our interests in educating people about culture, faith, art, music, and food. This last year has been difficult, but it has also been a year of tremendous grace as God reveals God’s self in and through our lives and our mission to feed people in mind, body, and spirit, and in the evolution of our purpose to become an intercultural community center working to dismantle the demons of oppression in our time.