What Do We Have in Common?
Mark 1: 21-31
Friday night, a number of St. Stephen folks went to Congregation Beth El to celebrate their annual Sisterhood Shabbat, sponsored by the Women of Reform Judaism—like our Presbyterian Women. It was a beautiful evening. There were a number of us, but also some folks from Broadway Baptist. Rabbi Ralph Mecklenburger and I preached a dialogue sermon. There was the naming ceremony for a new baby girl, after which a quintet of women came up and sang a simply beautiful blessing to the baby—it brought tears to some folks’ eyes. Afterward, we all gathered for a seeming feast of desserts and socialized for about an hour. One of Jewish hosts commented to me, “I think there’s a Christian in every Jew, and a Jew in every Christian, don’t you?” All I can say is, I hope so. Jews and Christians clearly have a lot in common.
Contrast that to post I saw recently on Facebook. The Stock Show was talking about its new policy, which I think is great, of inviting local religious leaders of all stripes to pray a blessing at the beginning of events. Several people—hundreds, I’m afraid—were posting their anger about the fact that a Muslim imam recently led the prayer. Some claimed that Islam is a conspiracy, led by the president of the United States, to overthrow our entire way of life, and that to have the imam lead a prayer was to concede to that conspiracy. The Stock Show responded that each cleric is asked, “to provide a one-minute prayer to include the safety of the contestants, animals and participants, the military men and women and world peace.” That’s exactly what the imam prayed for—things you’d think all of us would have in common at a stock show event. Sometimes, though, common ground isn’t enough to allay fears.
According to our Scripture today, Jesus and I have something in common: we both got invited to preach at a synagogue! In his case, the synagogue was in Capernaum—a building whose ruins still stand, by the way, and in fact is no more than half a block’s walk from the house Jesus likely lived in at the time, the house of his friend Peter and his family, which also is a major archaeological and religious site, near the shore of the teal green waters of the Sea of Galilee. Jesus was a newcomer to town, but apparently his reputation went ahead of him, and even though the synagogue would normally invite Scribes to preach, they decided to invite this new young amateur rabbi Jesus.
His preaching goes over well, but not with one member of the congregation, who gets possessed by a demon. Now in all honesty, I’ve sometimes felt like my parishioners have been possessed by demons, too, but this is serious business. It’s the real thing, and seems to come completely out of the blue. This is Jesus’ first exorcism, and it’s significant that it happens in a place of worship. Apparently, Jesus’ preaching causes this demon to emerge.
What’s interesting is what the evil spirit says. One translator renders it as, “What do you have in common with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us?”
There it is, in a nutshell: fear of the stranger. Fear of the unknown. Fear of change. Someone comes along with whom we think we have nothing in common–who believes something different, or does things a different way, and the automatic response is, “You’ve come to destroy us!”
It becomes a circular problem—because we think we have nothing in common with them, we fear them; and the more we fear them, the more we think we have nothing in common with them. We demonize them, even—we begin to think they are inhuman, without the same hopes, dreams, challenges, and reasons that we have for doing things.
But look at this scripture—there is a demon here, but it’s not in the stranger. The stranger is Jesus. The demon is in the man who is afraid, the man who believes he has nothing in common with this stranger and his new ideas and his new ways of doing things, the man who is afraid that this person is different, and therefore intends to destroy everything he stands for and loves. Fear of the stranger, fear of something new and different, fear of change–that’s the demon.
“What have you in common with me?” The fearful demon cries. Younger people today may look at older folks and say, “We have nothing in common with them.” But the younger generation, the millennials, they like knitting, and cooking, and lots of traditional skills. You have a lot in common and a lot to learn from older people. These older people are active and engaged. They have talents and great internal strength and perspective on life that you can benefit from. They have a good time. There’s a lot of wisdom and experience and joy among older folks that younger people can be fit from.
And older people may look at millennials and think, “We don’t have anything in common with them; they don’t relate to people; they always have their heads buried in their phones.” But millennials view themselves as extremely relational; they feel like they are more connected to people than any generation before them because they not only connect in person, they can stay connected all the time; when they find out a friend is sick, they can look up the illness online and find out what they can do to help them. They approach life with a refreshing openness and believe strongly in helping their fellow human beings. They do things differently, but they do the same things you and I do—we can learn from one another.
Every person we meet is new and different. Every person we meet, almost by definition, challenges who we are and what we believe and do, SIMPLY BECAUSE HE OR SHE IS DIFFERENT FROM US. That is one of the key ways God created for us to learn and grow, to be challenged, to have our world expanded: through our relationships with others, and especially with those who are different from ourselves.
The demon comes, though, when we stop seeing a person as a person, and simply start to see her as the way she is different from me. It’s not far from that—to deciding that she is a threat to my entire way of life.
For instance, one of my friends, who is a Coptic Christian of Egyptian descent, points out that many Western Christians think Muslims worship an entirely different God than we do, named Allah. “But Allah is just the Arabic word for God,” he says. “Muslims aren’t worshiping a god named Allah—they’re worshiping God.”
See what I mean? We see our fear, and because we are afraid, we don’t see what we have in common.
When I was in Israel last year, we visited the Hand-in-Hand School, an Israeli public school in Jerusalem, near a poor Palestinian section of town, which is dedicated to educating Israeli and Palestinian children together. These children learn about each others’ lives, religions, holidays, hopes, and fears. They work, eat, and play together. Every May, the children face alternative holidays that fall on the same day. It is the day the UN declared Israel a state, which for Israeli Jews is Israeli Independence Day, but for Palestinians and those of Arab descent is generally viewed as The Nakba—the day of displacement, when Palestinians were expelled from what was now Israel’s territory. The children are asked to do drawings, write papers, and do presentations on what those very different days mean to them. The point is for the children to appreciate what makes them different but also to see what they have in common with one another.
Recently the Hand-in-Hand School made international news because it was set on fire by Israeli extremists who wrote “Death to Arabs” on the walls. The building was empty, and no one was hurt. But the Demon had let out its cry of rage, “What do you have in common with us?”
The school goes about its business of building bridges, which is the best way to expel the demon.
There is an old Russian story. Two opposing sides of town were separated by a river, but joined by a bridge. Under the bridge two boys from the opposite sides of town met and began to play. They got into some sort of disagreement, and got into a fight, and each went home bloody and bruised. Their parents were furious. “This is an example of how the people on the other side of the bridge treat the people on this side of the bridge,” they told their neighbors. Soon mobs formed on either side of the river. They confronted each other violently on the bridge.
Meanwhile, under the bridge, the two boys had met again, and their fight forgotten, had begun to play with a little bark and leaf sailboat they’d made.
Let’s focus on what we have in common. It’s the best way to expel the demon.