What Does Jesus Have To Do With Us?

Exodus 20:15,16; Luke 4:31-37

A Sermon Preached by Donald Mackenzie

March 26, 2006

University Congregational United Church of Christ

Seattle, Washington

“What do you have to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth?” Luke 4:34a

In life there are these things I call narrow passages. I’m not sure where I got that but it seems apt because it describes a passage that is difficult but because of the word passage there is the assumption that we will get through it. I think of the loss of a loved one or a serious illness or the loss of a job or a serious disappointment. These are things I call narrow passages. But another sort of narrow passage is an encounter with a demon. Of course, when I use the word demon, I’m speaking metaphorically. But in the time of Jesus, demons were understood to be spiritual beings that could invade or get inside people and cause them harm. Evil spirits and demons had a very concrete sense.

But we have demons too. We all do. Not evil spirits in that more concrete sense but things or events that seem to cause us harm, make us unhappy, anxious, afraid or just otherwise out of sorts. We all have demons. These demons are a part of our shadow or dark side.

This morning I’m suggesting a relationship between these things we call demons and the important topic of integrity that we have been talking about during Lent—in particular lying and stealing. I’m saying that lying or being lied to can create a demon and stealing or being stolen from can also create a demon. And anything in that range of experience can give us a sense of a narrow passage. A narrow passage is a time that requires healing and so I want us to think about healing and integrity and what Jesus has do to with that and with us.

What does Jesus have to do with us? My own faith makes me think of Jesus in these ways. Jesus is a bridge, a way of crossing over from life that is superficial and taken for granted to a place where there is an alternative understanding about life can be like. That alternative understanding is God’s vision for us. Jesus by his life and teachings can help take us there. Jesus is also an example of the way God is with us. By following Jesus’ example, we can get closer to what God intends for us and for all of creation. Two stories told by Jesus help us to see that: the story of the Good Samaritan and the story of the Prodigal Son. In both stories someone has compassion, shows mercy to one who would not previously have received mercy—the one who was robbed was probably an untouchable—hence he was ignored by the priest and the Levite. And the son who wasted his inheritance is welcomed back with compassion by the father much to the amazement of the older son. In some ways these two stories point us to the essence of the gospel—compassion is the way to healing and to salvation. And it is by the authority of compassion that Jesus addresses the demon in our text today.

That’s why I love the question asked by the demon, “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth?” What indeed! For it is the figure of Jesus that calls us away from that dark and unhappy side, that side of unforgiveness and no justice, that side that has little or no compassion and cannot conceive of cooperating, and into the light of love and grace where we are constantly being given the tools to overcome our dark sides, to awaken to new life, to new ways of being. For, as I said, we all know what it is to have demons—demons as metaphors, as ways of talking about anything negative in our beings.

Let’s take an inventory of our demons—negative things that we actually hold in common. We have temptations, temptations toward success and even acts of deception that we believe will elevate the opinion others hold of us. We have temptations to believe that by buying certain products, we can become the people we dream of becoming. We have temptations that suggest that relationships with others will fill in the places in our own beings that feel incomplete. We have temptations that suggest that power is truly everything and that amassing power or having power over others will get us closer and faster to where we want to be.

We have fears, fears that we won’t measure up, fear that we will fail to be whatever it is that we dream we want to be or should be. We have fears that others won’t like us or love us. We have fears that we will be physically, mentally or spiritually harmed by someone or something. And we fear that finally our worth as human beings will be shown to be less than others.

And we have needs, needs that often feel they must be met at all costs. We have needs to feel complete, to be powerful, to be loved, to be successful as a way of proving our worth, to be funny, to be entertaining, to be talented, to be attractive, to be in control.

Our temptations, our fears and our needs can all take us to a shadowy place of our beings where love is not the defining feature of life. In its place we find self-concern and all the things that go with that lurking, idling, waiting. Our dark side is a place in need of healing and Jesus in that synagogue demonstrated that he had authority by the power of the love of God, to bring healing to those who need it.

The film Brokeback Mountain is an illustration of this need for healing as it portrays two rural men who fall in love in a part of our culture where that simply cannot happen without disastrous consequences. So instead they part and they each marry and as their stories unfold we see their imprisonment becoming more and more toxic, more and more corrosive to their spirits and hence to the very essence who they were. Their imprisonment is also illustrated in how difficult it was for them to speak about their relationship, about their lives, about their hopes and dreams and how hard (and you could see this in their faces as they spoke) it was for them to even articulate their dreams, their hopes. Their outer lives as married men, were almost completely disconnected from their inner lives as two men in love, not with their wives, but with each other and absolutely unable to do anything satisfactory about it. Watching the film was an experience of feeling that inability for every second of the film. The impossibility of their lives finding any kind of integrity, integrity meaning the integration of thinking, acting and rule of life, integration of what is inside with what is outside with what it is that helps to make sense of life defined every moment in the film.

The ministry of Jesus points us toward more and more opportunities to reconcile the inside of our beings with the outside so that someday, we will not be tempted to say “nothing is as it seems,” toward a stronger and stronger sense that through Jesus, God is with us especially in our narrow passages. The ministry of Jesus is a healing ministry conducted with the authority of compassion. No demon, no damage to our integrity, can stand up to the authority of compassion. Amen.