Mark 1:21-28
Lesson Focus
Jesus’ authentic and authoritative teaching and deeds of power call us to re-ask ourselves the question, “Just who is this Jesus?”
Lesson Outcomes
Through this lesson, students should:
Begin to ask questions about who Jesus is.
Become open to new ways of seeing Jesus’ ministry.
Begin movement toward knowing Jesus in a fuller and more complete way.
Catching Up on the Story
So far, we’ve encountered Jesus, John the Baptist (the hairy wilderness man), Jesus’ first four disciples, Simon (we will later know as Peter), his brother Andrew, and another set of brothers, James and John.
A hairy man from the wilderness shouting at people to repent that’s strange. Jesus being baptized by the hairy man from the wilderness, the heavens being torn apart, the Spirit of God deciding like a dove and hearing the very voice of God…If you’re not ready for it, that’s strange, too. A teacher commanding fishermen to follow him to an undisclosed location with only the promise to transform them from being fishers of fish into being fishers of people, well, that’s equally strange. We’ve been invited to look closer at each stop along the way. As we did, we discovered that God is up to something big and gigantically important in the history of the world. God’s work of salvation, which began with Israel, is now coming to the rest of the world. Salvation is a gift to be shared, and it’s for everyone. We’ve been baptized, empowered by the Spirit, adopted into the family of God, and commissioned as givers and shares of God’s good news. God sees us and calls us to begin an active following, which means we must repent, giving up our plans for our kingdom so that we might fully participate in God’s coming yet already here kingdom.
Seize the Day
Unless you think demonic exorcisms are common, you won’t believe that today’s passage is strange. Jesus casts an unclean spirit out of a man while in the middle of giving a sabbath sermon. Yet, surprisingly enough, the exorcism isn’t even the story’s main point, as far as Mark is concerned. It’s almost a footnote, reported in a humdrum and matter-of-fact way. No, the show’s real star isn’t this miracle; it’s Jesus’ teaching.
We’ve all had teachers that have inspired us. Their mastery of the knowledge and their experience with it, usually stemming not just from books or lectures but from real-life engagement with whatever the subject may be, inspired us to truly encounter the subject on our own. These teachers made it real for us.
In the 1998 film Dead Poets Society, the new English teacher at Welton Academy, John Keating, played by Robin Williams, was one of those teachers. Until that point in the boys’ lives who were attending Welton, they had not encountered a teacher quite like Keating. On his first day, he leads them out into the hallway for a special lecture.
[You can view the clip from Dead Poets Society here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vi0Lbjs5ECI]
Carpe Diem. Seize the day! This first class session would be just the first in many unusual and powerfully moving lessons Keating would give. Throughout the semester, the boys would be encouraged to always look at the world from a different perspective, initiated by standing at their desks. They would tear pages from their poetry textbook that wanted them to examine poetry in a mathematical sort of way. Keating would have none of that flat, lifeless approach to poetry or life. He wanted his students to live and experience life, not just learn about it.
As a result of Keating’s lessons, the boys would be encouraged to seize the day, come out of their shells, explore poetry, and follow their dreams. One of Keating’s students, Neil Perry, is genuinely inspired and restarts the “dead poets society,” which encourages reading and writing poetry, and he begins to pursue his love of acting. He lands a role as Puck from A Midsummer Night’s Dream in local production, only to have his father, who wishes that Neil attend an Ivy League school and ultimately become a doctor, forbid him to continue with the play. Neil ignores his father, and on the play’s opening night, Neil’s father removes him from the theater, withdraws him from Welton, and enrolls him in a military academy.
Devastated, Neil commits suicide. Heartbroken at their friend’s death, the other members of the Dead Poet’s Society get investigated by the school’s strict headmaster. One of them eventually places the blame for Neil’s death on Keating, who is forced to leave his position as an English teacher at Welton. At the movie’s end, the headmaster takes over Keating’s class, forcing them to learn in the dead, lifeless way that Keating wants to avoid. In one last effort to stand their ground and seize the day, one of the boys confesses that they were forced to implicate Keating, and in a show of solidarity, he stands up on this desk. The rest of the class soon follows suit.
Keating’s teaching was so powerful because it had the authority of experience. Yes, he had been taught English and poetry, but he had also experienced it. He had lived it. He had created it for himself. Hopefully, you’ve had a teacher like that who taught you from his or her love for the subject and intimate experience with it.
Mind Blown
That’s where our passage starts today, with the confession that Jesus taught as one who was teaching with the authority of experience and intimate knowledge of and connection to his subject. Jesus set up his home base of operations around Capernaum, a settlement near the Sea of Galilee. With his growing band of followers, he would visit the synagogue on the Sabbath. A synagogue was a local gathering place for worship. It, and still is, like a church for Jewish people. They meet on the Sabbath, from sundown on Friday to sunset on Saturday.
At this time, the Jewish faith had not yet ordained rabbis responsible for the teaching at these gatherings. The scribes did the teaching. They were Jewish men who could read and write, who had some training and ability to look into the scriptures and expound upon them. Being a Jewish man who could read and write and knew a thing or two about the story of God’s interaction with Israel, he would have been qualified to give the talk at the local synagogue. So, that’s where we find him. Teaching away, and like John Keating at Welton Academy, Jesus’ teaching begins to inspire and astound; it creates a movement within those who hear it.
Mark tells us that those gathered there that day were astounded by his teaching because he taught with authority and not like the scribes. The Greek word for astounded means something like this, “to be or become astounded to such a degree as to nearly lose one’s mental composure.” In other words, to have your mind blown!
Jesus’ teaching was so authentic, so steeped in direct and intimate knowledge of what he was teaching, that it caused all kinds of upheaval in the minds and hearts of those who heard it. Then, right there, in the middle of blowing the minds of those who came to the synagogue that day, a man stands up and begins to shout. This was no ordinary man, though. This was a demon-possessed man. Not only that, but we’re told he had an unclean spirit. Being unclean, he would have been unable to attend the synagogue meeting.
Not only is his presence there an insult to the meeting, but the man also gets up and says, “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God.”This is a startling statement. This man with an unclean spirit already knows who Jesus is. No one else in the story to this point, besides John the Baptist, maybe, truly knows who Jesus is. The Greek word the man uses for “know” is a word with various connotations. It communicates a significant level of intimacy. The spirits within the man haven’t just heard about Jesus; they’ve experienced him. They know who he is and what he’s doing and don’t like it.
Without missing a beat in his sabbath sermon, Jesus stops, commands the man to be silent, and for the unclean spirit to leave the man. With a loud shriek and a bit of convulsing, the spirit leaves the man, and Jesus returns to his talk. Meanwhile, those who have heard Jesus teach and witnessed Jesus’s authority over unclean spirits are all amazed. Again, they ask one another, “What is this? A new teaching - with authority! He commands even unclean spirits, and they obey him.” Notice that their amazement is still first at Jesus’ teaching. Jesus teaches as one with authority, an authority that comes from truly knowing, living, and experiencing the reality of what he’s teaching. And the crowd has connected Jesus’ authority as a teacher and power over things like unclean spirits. Jesus is powerful, not because he casts out demons, but because he teaches truth.
So What?
Confronted with this new teaching, teaching with authority, the main question for us and Mark’s readers is, “Just who is this Jesus?” See, to this point in Mark’s narrative, we haven’t begun to unpack the nature of who Jesus is and what he’s about. We’ve heard what Mark says about it at the beginning of the gospel. We’ve witnessed John the Baptist proclaim Jesus’ greatness. We’ve watched as Jesus was baptized, seeing and hearing God’s pleasure with Jesus, but except for two or three little lines, we haven’t heard from Jesus.
We know who Jesus is, as the man with the unclean spirit confesses, he’s the “holy one of God,” but we don’t yet know him with the same kind of intimacy as even the demon-possessed man does. We have yet to hear him preach. We have yet to listen to him teach. We can only now take seriously the witness of those who’ve just had their mind blown away by his presence and his teaching. Even then, we can only stand with them asking, “What is this? Who is this?”
This is the critical question of our faith. Who is Jesus? It’s the one that sets up all the other questions we might have about God and our place in this world. On the surface, we’ve answered that question, but perhaps if we were to respond to someone else about who Jesus is, our teaching would be powerless, lacking authority, like the scribes. Today’s invitation is for us to continue asking the question, who is Jesus? As we move through telling the story of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection.
As we ask that question, I’m confident that we will grow in our understanding of who he is in an intimate, complete way so that when others ask us who Jesus is, like Jesus, we’ll be able to teach them with authority, because we’ve experienced him, because we’ll genuinely, and fully know him.
Discussion Questions
Read the text aloud. Then, read the text to yourself quietly. Read it slowly, as if you were very unfamiliar with the story.
Have you ever had a teacher who inspired you to learn more about a particular subject? Or, have you ever had a teacher who has challenged you to see the world around you differently? Describe that for the group.
Mark tells us that those in the synagogue that day were “astounded” by Jesus’ teaching. The word Mark uses could be translated as having one’s mind blown. So, verse 22 could begin like this, “Their minds were blown at his teaching….” Have you ever had your mind blown by a teacher? If so, why do you think that was?
Why did the people believe Jesus’ teaching had more authority than the scribes (Jewish religious teachers)?
As Jesus is teaching, a demon-possessed man interrupts the meeting, shouting, “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God.” How could this demon-possessed man understand who Jesus was?
The word the demon-possessed man uses for “know” conveys a deeper meaning than just knowing something or someone superficially. There’s knowing, and then theirs knowing something or someone. The word communicates a depth of intimacy and experience that moves beyond casual knowledge. Have you ever known something or someone with that kind of knowledge?
Do you think it’s possible to know Jesus with the same intimacy and experience as the demon-possessed man?
The main question for us is, do we know Jesus? Are we prepared to allow Jesus to blow our minds with his teaching? Are we ready to let Jesus help us see the world differently?
What might God be calling us to do?
Who might God be calling us to become?
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