Fierce Conversations

Mark 1: 21-28

A Sermon by the Reverend Odette Lockwood-Stewart

Epworth United Methodist Church

In Mark’s gospel Jesus begins his ministry on the Sabbath. He walks right into the synagogue in Capernaum where people gather to pray and to study and Jesus begins to teach.  The people were astounded by his teaching. 

Jesus uses no references, no commentaries, no secondary sources, footnotes or quotations, no power point! He makes no appeal to authority.

He teaches, in word and action, with authority.

Any college student can tell you that it’s not the course description in the catalogue it’s the teacher that makes the difference.  Well, Jesus brought it to a whole new level and scripture tells us that people were astounded.   Any elementary student can sense the difference between authority and authoritarian.  Jesus confounds expectations with the liberating power of his teaching.

Suddenly, a man with an “unclean spirit” enters the synagogue and interrupts Jesus’ teaching.  The man was “deeply disturbed” by an “afflicting spirit.”  We don’t know what Jesus was saying at the moment he was interrupted.  We don’t know the name of that disturbing spirit. But a confrontation, a swift and fierce conversation, took place between Jesus and that unclean spirit in that space and God’s amazing grace set that man free.

Grace set the community free as well.  In Eugene Peterson’s translation of the text, the people who witnessed the confrontation in the synagogue asked, “What’s going on here? A new teaching that does what it says?!”

“A teaching that does what it says …”  “Reality Theology” we might say.  The love of Jesus redeems, restores and … teaches by a deep, fearless confrontation with entrenched powers and destructive spirits.

If you have ever been part of an intervention confronting drug addiction, or alcohol addiction; if you have ever been part of an intervention confronting domestic violence; if you have ever struggled with destructive spirits that knew, named, and claimed your soul; then you recognize the loud cries of that man who burst into the synagogue that morning.

In the words of Rita Nakashima Brock in your worship guide this morning, “Naming the demons means knowing the demons… Jesus hears below the demon noises, an anguished cry for deliverance.”          

The unclean spirit challenges Jesus, ”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.”

In an interesting organizational “success” book called Fierce Conversations, author Susan Scott identifies the gradual and sudden power of transformation that takes place one conversation at a time. 

She outlines seven principles of fierce conversations:

To find the courage to interrogate reality – To ask “What is going on?”

To make it real – To come out from behind ourselves;

To participate in each and every conversation as if it matters – It does;

To tackle the toughest challenge today – To confront obstacles first;

To honor and obey what you already know to be true;

To take responsibility for what you say;

To let silence help you discover what the conversation is really about.

Fierce Conversations are real.  They question what’s going on.  They arise from deep knowing and from silence.  Fierce conversations require us to show up, pay attention, to take responsibility and to  trust.

Mary has faced fierce conversations this week confronting the death of her wonderful little sister, Nancy.  Today is Nancy’s 48th birthday.  The unreality of most human conversation becomes unbearable in the harsh reality of endings and luminous truth that love and life do not end in death.  “What the caterpillar calls the end, the master calls the butterfly.”

Some fierce conversations are chosen, most are avoided at a high cost.  Some happen in spite of every avoidance technique known to psyche and civilization. 

Think about it.  What are the conversations that need to happen? 

How much energy is spent dreading, avoiding, fearing these conversations?

Fierce conversations bring change.

One such conversation took place over the holidays at my house.  A beloved member of my family and I have kept a conspiracy of silence for over 25 years – silence about politics, at least. Jeff and I disagree on just about everything, and I love him like the brother he is.  He works in an emergency response unit of a major city. 

I’ve spent a lot of energy over the years surfing the waves of conversation, (and I don’t swim!) guiding us away from conversational wipe-outs, trying to keep the ride of our relationship going.  When conversation surfing failed in recent years, I found a new way to respond:  when Jeff made a provocative remark that disturbed or offended me, I would pause, look at him, smile, and say simply, “I love you, Jeff.” 

It has served well as a spiritual practice until recently.

This Thanksgiving Jeff and I plunged into the deep waters of fierce conversation. We were sitting at our kitchen table when Jeff picked up the newspaper and celebrated the death sentence of former gang leader Stanley Tookie Williams.  He said that he thought more gang leaders should be on death row or, better yet, should save the taxpayers money by dying before ever getting there.

I breathed a prayer.  I asked him why he said that.  He talked about seeing 37 knifing victims in one day.  He talked about tending the bodies of children not only hurt, not only killed, but small children horribly mutilated and tortured.  I listened to his grief and sorrow and anger and fear and sense of powerlessness. He repeated that gang bangers who do such things do not deserve to live.

Jeff is a born again Christian.  I asked him how he reconciled his work and his faith with these words.  He said that it’s possible for human beings to throw away their humanity.  And when they do they deserved to die. 

I asked him about redemption.  He said that there’s a point beyond redemption.  I asked where that point is located. We sat in silence and dis-ease. He said that he knows that he is a hypocrite. I said, I am too.  He said that he knows that this does not fit with Jesus’ teaching. I said that I know I don’t live with the violence and suffering that he sees every day.  I said I know I do not risk my live every day to help others.  I told him that he had a unique responsibility and opportunity.  We talked about the structural violence of poverty and racism.  We told stories of what we have witnessed and lived.   We talked about suburban fundamental mega-churches and north Berkeley progressive churches and the state of our souls.

We need fierce conversations. With ourselves, with each other, with God.

Theologian John Cobb says its time for a rebirth of lay theology … and he defines this simply as … “intentional Christian thinking about important matters.”

To silence demons, to heal afflictions and addictions, to cast out spirits that isolate us from ourselves and one another, to know personal and social transformation by the power of Jesus… we’ve got to be real … with ourselves and with each other one conversation at a time.

The book of Ephesians and the traditional language of church community says that we are committed to “speaking the truth in love.” 

And that’s real easy … all except the truth part and the love part.

We are timid in speaking hard truths … and we are weak in extending true love.

Jesus began his public ministry with … “A new teaching that does what it says.” 

Thanks be to God.