A sermon on Mark 1: 21-28 & Deuteronomy 18: 15-20 by Nathan Nettleton

There is a war going on, and we’re in the thick of it. There might be another one in Iraq in the next few weeks, and although it is provoking more immediate fear, it probably doesn’t pose as much direct danger to most of us here. The two wars — the ongoing one and the possible one — are related though.

The ongoing war has been going on for a long time. You could hear it being anticipated in the first reading tonight, the reading from the book of Deuteronomy. God promises to raise up a prophet to speak the truth that God wants spoken, and the people are expected to respond accordingly. But God also notes that there will be conflict. There will be other “prophets”; at least two kinds. There will be those who speak for other gods; who appeal to some other sort of “truth” and call us to give our allegiance and devotion to a message and a cause that is not that of our God. There will also be those who claim to speak on behalf of our God, but who are frauds. They use the name of the Lord to justify what they are saying and to persuade us that their message has the authority of God behind it, but the message has not been given to them by God. According to the book of Deuteronomy, the writing is on the wall for both kinds of prophets who preach a message that is not from God.

In tonight’s gospel reading, we heard St Mark’s account of the opening skirmish when the great prophet appeared speaking God’s words. This story of Jesus’s confrontation with a demonic power in the synagogue is the first act of his public ministry in Mark’s account. It is a pretty blunt assessment by Mark of what is going on. He associates the synagogue and its leadership with the presence of demonic power. Mark constructs the story so that the actual clash with the demonic power is framed, before and after, by the gathered congregations comments on the contrast between the teaching of Jesus and the teaching they were used to from the scribes, the official religious experts of the day. Clearly he is asking us to see this clash as an illustration of the conflict between Jesus and the scribes, between the prophet who speaks God’s words, and the “prophets” who claim to be speaking on behalf of God but who speak words that God has not given them.

In this story, and in an ongoing way since, we are witnessing a mighty struggle, a cosmic war, between those who receive the words of God and respond to them with faithfulness and integrity, and those who are opposed to God, but who seek to coopt God’s name to legitimise their agendas. Mark is not afraid to identify such agendas with demonic powers, and Deuteronomy foreshadows fatal consequences for those who espouse them, but the conflict continues.

As war between nations looms ominously near, the false prophets are more and more visible. It is often said that the first casualty of war is truth, and for those of us who have pledged our allegiance to the God of Truth, it is all the more distressing to hear the blasphemous use of God’s name to legitimise those lies and the lust for war and hatred of the stranger that are wrapped up in those lies. In the name of God and freedom, they tell us that we must remove the Iraqi regime to make the world a safer place. But didn’t they use the same argument for bombing Afghanistan back into the stone age to remove the Taliban regime? Are any of you feeling safer as a result? Or are hatred and violence begetting more hatred and violence, as they always have and always will until the lies of the blaspheming false leaders are exposed and the demons are cast out screaming? Be in no doubt who will win this larger and longer war. No matter how sophisticated the lies or how demonic the powers, they are no match for the one who not even death could hold down.

In the face of this conflict between the power of love and the love of power, between the truth of God and the lying gods of hatred and violence, we are called to stand up and be counted. We are called to take sides, to declare our allegiance and to follow the Lord of Love and Prince of Peace, no matter what the cost. We are called to cast in our lot with the one who died for the men, women and children of Iraq just as much as he died for George Bush and John Howard; with the one who exposes the demonic force of lies and hatred without paying any heed to which nation or religious group they emanate from.

We gather around this table as those who have pledged our allegiance to Jesus; as those who have risen from the waters of baptism filled with his words of truth and his passion for peace. Tonight we are going to reaffirm those commitments to God and to one another, because David and Jill want to reaffirm their baptismal vows and be accepted into the membership of this congregation, to stand with us as we stand with Jesus in the struggle for truth and love and peace. So let us stand and affirm the faith of the church….