From the Gospel of Mark:
People came to see what it was that had happened. They came to Jesus and saw the demoniac sitting there, clothed and in his right mind, the very man who had had the legion; and they were afraid. Those who had seen what had happened to the demoniac and to the swine reported it. Then they began to beg Jesus to leave their neighborhood.
(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Mark 5:14b-17 (NRSV) – March 21, 2014.)
The story of the reaction of the people to the curing of the Gerasene demoniac is, I think, unique among the healing stories in the Gospels. Most of the time when people hear of or witness one of Jesus’ healings, he is then swamped by crowds and sometimes has to flee them. Here, we are told that he is begged to go away. As I read the passage, I thought of Isaiah’s reaction to his call: “Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips” (Isa. 6:5) These folks are those who realize they are “a people of unclean lips.” Like Isaiah, they fear being in the presence of holiness.
And yet . . . they were attracted to it initially. It was they who “came to see” what was going on. That is the nature of holiness; it attracts and it repels. Rudolph Otto, a great early 20th Century Lutheran theologian, defined “the holy” by these characteristics. He coined the term “the numinous” (derived from the Latin numen, “divine power”) and described it as a “non-rational, non-sensory experience or feeling whose primary and immediate object is outside the self.” (The Idea of the Holy, 1917)
Otto used the Latin phrase mysterium tremendum et fascinans to describe the “object” of this experience. Mysterium (“mystery”) denotes the wholly Other which can be experienced only with blank wonder or stupor. Tremendum (“awe inspiring” or “terrifying”) describes the absolute unapproachability of God in whose presence one appreciates a sense of one’s own nothingness and utter dependence. Fascinans (“fasinating” or “attractive”) signifies the holy’s potent charm which draws us to it despite our fear.
For many, this is the experience of walking into a sacred space, a place where God’s majesty has been revealed before. Places of worship, religious architecture and art, great church music are some of the human attempts to reflect the mystery of God and often form the backdrop for the experience Otto describes. But Otto was quick to point out that more often the experience comes in non-religious settings. The numinous may be and often is experienced in our appreciation of a mountain vista, the changing colors of autumn leaves, the flight of migratory birds, or the awesome majesty of lightening and thunder.
Yesterday at 10 a.m., when the National Weather Service and all the commercial weather forecasters predicted a partially sunny day with ambient temperatures getting above 50F, I looked out my office window and saw snow falling thickly and the ground blanketed in white! I had that “non-rational, non-sensory experience” of which Otto speaks, that sense of the utter unknowability and unpredictability of creation. No matter how much we study and how much we learn (at least so far in human existence) there is still that part of reality that we don’t know and don’t understand. For all of our experimentation and hypothesizing, for all of our theoretical mathematics, there is still that millionth of a billionth of a trillionth of a second at the beginning of time about which we know nothing. For all of our biological and medical and chemical knowledge and experimentation, there is still that glimmer in my lover’s eyes, there is still that lilt in my daughter’s laughter, there is still so much that warms my heart and soul that cannot be explained, that is and can be appreciated only in a non-rational and non-sensory way.
It is fascinating and attractive, and it is, as my kids are wont to say, awesome!
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Father Funston is the rector of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio.
This is one of those times (there are, I admit, quite a few) when Paul loses me! I step back from his words and say, “Really? What?” Is Paul seriously equating sex with a prostitute with marriage? I know that Paul didn’t have too high an opinion of marriage. In the next chapter he will say that he thinks staying single is a much better idea: “I wish that all men were even as I myself am. . . . I say to the unmarried and to widows that it is good for them if they remain even as I.” (1 Cor. 7:7,8) But does he really hold it in such low regard so as to equate it with prostitution?
This may be the simplest, truest, most profound thing Paul ever wrote. No flowery language, no showing of his erudition and knowledge of the Hebrew Scriptures or of Greek philosophy, no convoluted logic, no run-on sentences. Just a simple declaration: if you are in litigation, you’ve already lost.
Paul uses the metaphor of yeast in a negative way making it symbolize sin and corruption. In the letter to the Galatians, he uses it in a similar manner in an aside about the few who have “prevented you from obeying the truth,” saying, “A little yeast leavens the whole batch of dough.” (Gal. 5:7,9)
Is it just coincidence that we read in Genesis of a famine on St. Patrick’s Day? This day of international Irish pride, when “everyone is Irish,” would just be the feast of another insignificant local saint but for the Irish diaspora, especially the Irish emigration to the United States in the mid-19th Century. And that would not have happened then and in such large numbers but for an Gorta Mór, the “Great Hunger,” the Irish potato famine.
Gregory of Nyssa, one of the Cappadocian Fathers, is supposed to have said, “Concepts create idols; only wonder comprehends anything. People kill one another over concepts. Wonder makes us fall to our knees.” I think that pretty much describes what is going on in today’s Gospel lesson, and pretty much describes what has become of conversation and discussion between groups in our society. The Pharisees and the Herodians, who disagreed with one another about nearly everything, could nonetheless come together and plot to kill Jesus because his words and actions threatened both of their conceptual frameworks. They had to defend their concepts against the wonder of healing, even if it meant killing.
I remember preaching on this text some years ago and doing a lot of research into the meaning of “new wine” as used in the Bible (tirowsh in Hebrew, oinon neon in Greek) — whether it meant fermented wine or yet-to-be-fermented newly-crushed grape juice. There is a lot of differing scholarship on the issue, both among Biblical scholars and oenologists. I came to the conclusion that all of that scholarship is an interesting waste of time. None of it matters to Jesus’ meaning in using this metaphor for the spiritual life.
It’s a familiar story. A paralyzed man on a pallet comes to Jesus carried by his friends. They can’t get by the crowd, so they cut a hole in the roof of the house where Jesus is staying. (The first verse of the chapter says “he was at home” in Capernaum. That’s an interesting thing to say of someone who “has nowhere to lay his head,” [Matt. 8:20] but I don’t want to be distracted by that this morning.) The man on his mat is lowered through the hole and Jesus heals him. A pretty straightforward story of a miracle healing.
I’m mentoring a study group in my parish, eight well-educated adults seeking to better understand their faith. We’re using some academic materials from a program well-known to Episcopalians. At our last meeting, nearly all of them commented on and complained about the “high falutin'” academic language used by some of our authors. I thought of that as I read Paul describing his missionary efforts as not proclaimed “in lofty words or wisdom.”
The religion vs. science debate is heating up! Bill Nye the Science Guy recently debated Ken Ham, the founder of a “creation science” museum in Kentucky; they made headlines but not a lot of progress in resolving the phony conflict. Sunday night Neil deGrasse Tyson premiered his reboot of Carl Sagan’s classic Cosmos series, which included potshots at religious certainty including a very amateurish looking cartoon about Giordano Bruno which was, at best, inaccurate and, at worst, dishonest. (There’s been a lot of discussion among my Facebook friends about that.) I hope the series improves and doesn’t become a polemic against religion; the Sagan original certainly never was.
