Not Today, Satan
Eastern Parkway United Methodist Church
A warm welcome to each worshiper today. We celebrate you and offer you our friendship and love. We are a congregation of people who seek to grow spiritually, to become more like Christ in His compassion and acceptance of everyone while growing more aware of what it really means to be Christians today.
As a Reconciling Congregation, EPUMC affirms the sacred worth of persons of all sexual orientations and gender identities and welcomes them into full participation in the fellowship, membership, ministries, and leadership of the congregation.
943 Palmer Avenue, Schenectady, NY 12309 / 518-374-4306 epumc943@gmail.com / www.easternparkway.org
Order of Worship
February 4, 2024
10:00 a.m.
*You are invited to rise in body or spirit.
Prelude
Greeting and Announcements
Mission Statement: We are a faith community striving to be, to nurture, and to send forth disciples of Jesus Christ.
Call to Worship:
Do you know? Do you hear?
Our God is from everlasting to everlasting.
Come to know. Come to hear.
Our God gives powers to the weak.
Are you tired? Are you faint?
Our God will renew your strength.
Come, lift up your weary arms.
Rise up like eagles on the wings of God!
*Hymn Come Share the Lord #2269
Prayer of Confession:
How can we look at this world and not sing of your praises, O God? The beauty and majesty of the world is overpowering! Yet we have a tendency to take all that you do for us for granted. We treat the world with callous indifference, using its resources carelessly and with little regard to the future. We insist on war as solutions for problems rather than peaceful striving. We turn our backs on people in need, the weak and downtrodden go unnoticed in our midst. We always believe that someone else will care for those in need. How foolish we are, O God! How ignorant we have become! You have given to us all that we need. You have blessed us with the witness of Jesus Christ who came so that we might learn how you would have us live, in honor and peace. Forgive us. Heal our hearts and spirits. Make us fully aware of all our blessings and our responsibilities. Give us again a spirit of joy in serving you. Help us be agents of peace and hope to others. For we offer this prayer in Jesus’ Name. AMEN.
Assurance:
Jesus has come to heal our spirits and our souls. The demons of arrogance, indifference and apathy are being cast out. New life is offered to you in Jesus Christ. Rejoice! Be Glad! For God’s love is poured out to you this day. AMEN.
Scripture Reading Mark 1: 29-39
Jesus Heals Many at Simon’s House
29 As soon as they[a] left the synagogue, they entered the house of Simon and Andrew, with James and John. 30 Now Simon’s mother-in-law was in bed with a fever, and they told him about her at once. 31 He came and took her by the hand and lifted her up. Then the fever left her, and she began to serve them.
32 That evening, at sunset, they brought to him all who were sick or possessed by demons. 33 And the whole city was gathered around the door. 34 And he cured many who were sick with various diseases and cast out many demons, and he would not permit the demons to speak, because they knew him.
A Preaching Tour in Galilee
35 In the morning, while it was still very dark, he got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed. 36 And Simon and his companions hunted for him. 37 When they found him, they said to him, “Everyone is searching for you.” 38 He answered, “Let us go on to the neighboring towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also, for that is what I came out to do.” 39 And he went throughout all Galilee, proclaiming the message in their synagogues and casting out demons.
Sermon Not Today, Satan
Today, like the last several weeks, I’m preaching straight from the lectionary, and when I read and then reread this passage, I was very struck by all the talk throughout about demons. Our first setting is the house Simon and his brother Andrew both live in before leaving it to follow Jesus, and we find out that they lived there with Simon’s mother-in-law. Side bar: does that mean Simon is married? What ever happened to his wife? Mysteries of the Bible. But regardless, Jesus, and the other pair of brother disciples, James and John, enter the house with Simon and Andrew, and see that Simon’s MIL has a fever. In 2024 this means “bring this lady two Tylenol, a bottle of water, and her favorite celebrity gossip magazine to read in bed.” But in the First Century, most medical problems were very poorly understood, and even a simple fever could quickly turn fatal, especially because she’s likely sick in addition to being malnourished and living in poor sanitation. Meaning that Simon isn’t calmly bringing his MIL a cold compress and a copy of Us Weekly, he’s a step shy of panic. We also need to understand that, because health problems were so poorly understood, most people explained sickness, injury, and disability as “demon possession”. Simon’s MIL did something bad that angered God, who then sent a demon into her body to torture her from within. If she doesn’t make it, her death will be understood as some kind of punishment for her perceived sins. When Jesus takes the woman’s hand, gets her on her feet, and makes her feel better, he has performed a miracle on multiple levels: he touched a sick, unrelated woman and broke several purity rules, he cured her from an illness that could have killed her, and her saved her from the town’s judgment. Now that she’s healthy, no one will sit around and try to guess what bad thing she did to incur God’s wrath and end up with a demon in her. She rose up (literally, from lying down to standing) from destructive circumstances, into hope for a better future.
As Jesus moves on in this story, Mark tells us that Jesus confronted many more demons as he continued to heal the sick, injured, and disabled. My curiosity was piqued when I read “he would not permit the demons to speak, because they knew him.” I know what “demons” were to Mark, to his First Century readers, and to Jesus’ neighbors in this story. But what were “demons” in Jesus’ mind, I wonder, if he knew them? What, or who, was it that Jesus knew?
Many of you already know this about me, but when I read biblical references to “demons”, “devils”, “the devil”, “Satan”, or anything similar, I never imagine a literal guy with a pointy red tail and a pitchfork who rules the underworld and stands around and pokes you for eternity if you were naughty in this life. But, I also respect that many people I dearly love–perhaps some of you–believe that the universe works that way. The words of scripture and the logic of what you see around you certainly leave the door wide open for the possibility that Satan is the landlord of hell, a place where the furnace is set to 100 degrees and the knob to adjust it is broken, a place where you always get stuck making awkward small talk with people who are terrible conversationalists, and a place where “Baby Shark” plays on a 24/7 loop and no one can change the music. John and Charles Wesley both believed in hell and the devil pretty strongly, and so do many of my colleagues. I’ve just never been one of them. Based on my relationship with the Divine, and my life experiences, the only hell I can imagine is one where, if I’ve truly been such a bad person, I go to the DMV and spend eternity waiting in line. But I don’t believe in that hell, either. I believe in a just and loving God, in universal salvation, and in a Savior whose love is big enough to reconcile all of us to a future in the Good Place. I know that belief opens a ton of hard questions for which there are no good answers, and that my theology can be very hard to defend on days when the people around me are being their worst selves. I’ve surely encountered humans in rush hour traffic that I felt were deserving of hell, if one were to open up below our feet. But even then, I still don’t believe in that. I still believe that nothing in this universe holds any supernatural power but God, and that no amount of garbage we stir up here can overwhelm the love of the Creator.
So, if that’s the worldview I hold onto, then who are the “demons” in texts like this one? Is it possible I read that world similarly to how Jesus heard it? I can never know for sure. But in looking at the words themselves, I go back to my seminary education. The Greek word we see show up several times in this text, “daemon”, implies something supernatural, but always points toward division. These demons show up and they divide. The word we see in the Old Testament, “ha-satan”, that often gets translated as either “satan” or “the devil” literally means “the adversary.”
And this is something I absolutely believe in. Not necessarily a malevolent, divine force competing with God, but a force we create all on our own amongst ourselves, that, once cultivated, takes on such a life of its own that it can feel like a god if we don’t know any better. A human impulse to divide, take sides, and oppose our own neighbors. Forces in your midst that are against you, and your well being. And what can hurt you can hurt everyone. I don’t believe this human force causes illnesses and injuries, but it doesn’t help them, either. And none of us thrive until we get rid of what divides and opposes us and replace it with reconciliation. The choice to embrace love is what drives out demons.
I stumbled across an old but very inspirational news story this week, about a man named Michael Eugene Burden, who lived in a town called Laurens, SC in the ‘90s. When he was new to that town, deep in the Bible belt, he was also young, vulnerable, and struggling to find work because he didn’t have a high school diploma. Michael befriended a man named John Howard, who turned out to be a wolf in sheep’s clothing. John took Michael under his wing and allowed him to live in an empty apartment above an old, out of business theater that John had just purchased. John jumped at having a safe, comfortable place to live, and looked into opening a store in the old theater. Eager to make friends, John introduced Michael to his circle–devoted members of the KKK. Michael was already predisposed to that way of thinking because his parents had both briefly been Klan members, and he had been so lonely that it felt great to be part of a group, so he fell right into the KKK’s claws. Inspired by their white supremacist ideology, he decided to name his new store the Redneck Shop, and to sell tshirts and bumper stickers with racist expressions on them, as well as Confederate flags. Michael felt embraced by the Klan, and his shop was a success, but it also quickly attracted protestors. An organized, peaceful demonstration outside Michael’s shop, led by a nearby church, introduced Michael to an African American preacher named David Kennedy. As the controversy around his Klan activity and his racist business intensified, Michael began stalking Pastor David, and made plans to attack him at his house. But before Michael could carry out that plan, an angry neighbor drove his car into the front of Michael’s store, causing thousands of dollars worth of damage. On the day that Michael started cleaning up the wreck, another neighbor came to help out, a single mom named Judy Harbeson. Michael and Judy got to know one another better, and when they realized how much they had in common, a romance started blooming between them. Michael asked Judy to marry him, but she told him she’d only do it if he left the Klan. As a wedding gift to Judy, Michael resigned from his local Klan chapter and closed his store. But this enraged the other Klan members, and in retaliation, Michael’s old toxic Klan friend John kicked him out of his apartment. Michael, Judy, and Judy’s two children slept in Michael’s truck and begged for food. Desperate, Michael ended up on the doorstep of the church that protested against his store, confessed to Pastor David that he’d been stalking him, and begged for help. Pastor David forgave him, bought food for his whole family, put them in temporary housing, and invited them to start coming to church. Shortly after, Michael, Judy, and her kids moved into a trailer, and became active members of Pastor David’s church. Michael continued to have a hard time finding good work after he closed his store, both because he lacked a formal education and because of his Klan involvement. But these days, Michael remains a changed man. He’s renounced and rejected his racist past, and he’s good friends with Pastor David, who helped him carve out his own path to redemption and reconciliation with his neighbors.
No matter how you imagine them–whether you think they’re literal supernatural entities with their own address in the Underworld, or whether you think they’re euphemisms for the shadow sides of our own selves–this world is crawling with demons. They divide us into categories of race, class, and gender, and they get us to wage war with one another even when it makes us cut off our nose to spite our face. But Jesus saves us from those demons everytime, and delivers us to a future where our inherent goodness is restored, and we’re free to live in peace. No matter what happens and how long it takes for us to get there, that peace will win out every time.
Amen.
*Hymn Precious Lord, Take My Hand #473
Offering
Offertory
*Doxology #94
*Prayer of dedication
Pastoral Prayer and Lord’s Prayer
Lord,
We come to you in a time of coldness and darkness,
Looking for warmth and light.
There are those whose homes are physically freezing,
And there are those whose lives are spiritually chilly
We know that we can help warm people’s homes.
We also know you can warm people’s lives.
We pray that there will be no more gloom for those who were in anguish
We pray that you lift away people’s burdens.
We pray you remove the things that oppress from people’s lives.
We pray you give courage to those who fear.
Lord your light calls us forth to follow and serve you.
Your light still shines for all to see in this world.
May we continue to reflect your light in our lives,
in our service, in our words and in our deeds.
~ written by Rev. Abigail Carlisle-Wilke, and posted on Rev Abi’s Long and Winding Road. http://vicarofwadley.blogspot.ca/2011/01/prayer-for-epiphany-3a.html
Our Father, Mother, Creator God, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who have trespassed against us. Lead us, not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory forever. Amen.
The Lord’s Supper
*Hymn Immortal, Invisible, God Only Wise #103
Benediction
Postlude
Staff
Natalie Bowerman Pastor
Betsy Lehmann Music Director
Joe White Custodian
Cassandra Brown Nursery Attendant
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