You will recall that in last Sunday’s Old Testament Lesson . . . the Prophet Jeremiah told us that when you are reconciled to God . . . not only do you benefit, but everyone around you benefits as well.  . . . And so, sure enough, what does Saint Mark tell us?  . . . Last Sunday Saint Mark tells us that Jesus came into Galilee preaching reconciliation!  “Repent,” Jesus says; “be reconciled with God and believe in the gospel.”  . . . And then, Saint Mark tells us that Jesus called Peter and Andrew and James and John to be His disciples of reconciliation; . . . to become fishers of men; . . . to become the means by which everyone around them might benefit from their being reconciled with God and disciples of the gospel.

    Now, . . . at this point I want to say something about “discipleship” so that everyone is clear about what we mean by that word.  . . . You see, . . . there are two varieties of discipleship:  . . . there’s the profane variety . . . and there’s the sacred variety.  . . . Profane discipleship happens when someone attaches themselves to a Master who is the teacher of a body of wisdom and knowledge which imparts life “secrets” and ways of living and doing things which, in turn, are expected to impart happiness, contentment, and self-fulfillment.  The object of profane discipleship is to so thoroughly appropriate this body of wisdom and knowledge that, one day, the disciple “graduates” from discipleship and becomes a Master.  . . . But sacred discipleship is an entirely different thing.  Christian discipleship understands that the Master is the wisdom and knowledge which makes all things clear; . . . that our happiness, contentment, and self-fulfillment is perfected in following and being disciplined by the Master, . . . Who is Jesus.  And so, while I was ordained to the priesthood by Bishop Harvey Butterfield from Vermont and served my priestly apprenticeship under Bishop Wolf in the Diocese of Maine, they were never my masters, . . . nor am I yours.  Jesus was and is the Master of our Bishops.  And Jesus is my Master and yours; . . . Jesus is our Master . . . and He is the content of our discipleship, just as He was for Andrew, Peter, James, and John.

    Saint Mark explains it this way:  He says that “they [Jesus, Andrew, Peter, James, and John] . . . they went into Capernaum; and . . . on the sabbath [Jesus] entered the synagogue and taught.”  . . . Now, imagine how it would be for us, if a rather cheerful newcomer showed up here at Zion one Sunday and sat down to participate in the Liturgy, singing the hymns lustily, and listening to the Lessons attentively,  . . . and then, following the reading from the Gospel, He gets up and starts telling you about what you have just heard.  How would you feel about that?  What would you say, . . . or would you simply listen to what our Guest has to say?  . . . Saint Mark says that at the synagogue in Capernaum . . . a fellow objected.  He was a fellow who had “an unclean spirit.”  . . . And with these two images -- the image of Jesus teaching and the image of a man with an unclean spirit objecting; . . . with these two images, Saint Mark has some very important things for us to hear.

    First of all, Mark says that “[Jesus] entered the synagogue [at Capernaum] and taught”.  . . . Did you ever wonder what Jesus taught?  Don’t you think it’s important for us to know?  . . . But Mark never says.  One commentator observes that “In spite of the fact that Mark uses the [Greek] verb didasko [to teach] seventeen times [throughout his Gospel], no hint is [ever] given of the content of such teachings” (C.S. Mann, Mark, “The Anchor Bible”, pp.  211-212).  . . . Why do you suppose that is?  . . . Well, Saint Mark also says that Jesus taught with authority; . . . He taught with “exousia”, Mark says, a Greek word meaning “power to act.”  So, Jesus taught with a power that acts upon His hearers.  In other words, Jesus wasn’t communicating information when He taught; He was communicating something else.  . . . What do you suppose that is?  . . . Well, Saint Paul suggests that,

“Knowledge” puffs up, but love builds up.  If anyone imagines that he knows something, he does not yet know as he ought to know.  But if one loves God, one is known by him.

In other words, Christian discipleship doesn’t consist of learning and memorizing a corpus of laws and rules and rituals.  We are not the disciples of a teacher who lived long ago and is now dead, having entrusted us with wise sayings and insightful secrets.  Oh, no.  Christ Jesus was crucified and died upon the Cross to rise on the third day!  Christ is risen, and We are disciples of the living Son of God!  And I think Saint Paul has named what Jesus taught at Capernaum.  . . . Jesus taught in such a way at to communicate God’s love!  . . . And just as Jesus did at Capernaum, so He does today.  Just as He did at Capernaum, Jesus communicates God’s love to us, . . . so that, loving God in return, we might be known by Him, . . . and being known by God and knowing God -- being in communion with the Living God -- . . . we know as we ought to know.  Oh, sure, we have sacred Scriptures; we have the Law and we have the writings of the Prophets.  But those Scriptures are sacred only in as much as Jesus is present to us to teach us the love of God that is the heart of the Law and the life of the Prophets.  . . . That is what happened at Capernaum, when Jesus taught in the synagogue, . . . and that is what happens here as we listen to the readings, . . . as we reflect on them in the silences, . . . as we pray and as we sing the hymns; . . . even as I speak:  our risen and living Lord is present to us teaching God’s love to your heart and to your soul.

    On the other hand, not everyone is immediately fit to hear the love of God.  At the synagogue in Capernaum there was a man with an unclean spirit, Mark says.  And Saint Mark’s point in telling us about this poor fellow . . . is that (as one gospel commentator puts it) “nonritual uncleanness . . . makes [a person] unfit for communion with God” (Ibid., p. 212).  . . . So, in that synagogue at Capernaum, there was a man who was unable to hear the power of God’s love which Jesus taught; . . . the man was unable to hear it because he was inaccessible to God.  . . . But there is a remedy for that, Saint Mark says, . . . and the remedy is Jesus.  Mark tells us that Jesus commanded the unclean spirit; Jesus commanded the source of the man’s excommunication from God; Jesus commanded the unclean spirit to relinquish its hold; . . . Jesus deprived it of its power.  . . . And from this we learn that not only does Jesus communicate God’s love, . . . but He makes it accessible to us as well.

    Because, you see, by telling us about the man possessed of an unclean spirit,  Saint Mark is describing the extreme case of a universal condition.  Just as all of us can be going happily along one day, and the next day wake up with the sniffles and sneezes of a bodily influenza infection, . . . so we are ever in danger of waking up one morning with a serious spiritual infection -- some tiny thing that irritates our pride; a small, sticky annoyance that stops the flow of charity; a niggling little gluttony that simply must be fed; . . . we are ever in danger of waking up one morning with some spiritual infection which makes us . . . inaccessible to God; . . . makes us inaccessible to the love that gives us health.

    Now, when I speak of a “spiritual infection”, I am not simply using a figure of speech.  I am talking about a very real thing.  When we renounce, in Baptism, Satan and all the spiritual forces of wickedness and the evil powers of this world and of our own flesh which rebel against God and corrupt and destroy and draw us away from the love of God . . . we aren’t using artful language to describe human “attitudes”; we are describing something as deadly and unhealthful as tuberculosis or cancer or the common cold.  We are talking about repudiating the agents of spiritual disease.  And so, just as when you come down with a physical infection which makes you sick, . . . it isn’t enough to simply know the cause of your misery.  You have to take the medicine the doctor prescribes!  You have to take the prescribed medicine, or the infection might become worse and enable life threatening complications to set in; . . . an untreated physical infection might provide a welcome environment for some other and more deadly disease.  . . . And the same is true for your soul -- the same is true for your spiritual body.  No amount of knowledge will cure when the devil gets his hooks into you.  The medicine must be taken.  . . . And that medicine, Saint Mark says; . . . that medicine is Jesus.

    Saint Paul, writing to the Church at Corinth, tells them that “for us there is . . . one Lord, Jesus Christ, . . . through whom we exist.”  Jesus is the medicine Who establishes the health God, the Father, intends for us to have, . . . and Jesus maintains our health by depriving what is hurtful of its power to hurt us.  He did it at Capernaum; . . . He does it still.

    This is the sacred discipleship of our Christian faith, then:  to receive our healthful Master . . . and bring Him into the world’s presence so that it too might be inoculated with divine health.  And so, here we are today; . . . here we are gathered to receive Jesus.  We are gathered to receive Jesus into our hands and into our bodies and into our souls . . . so that His authority might drive out any spiritual infection lurking in our lives; . . . so that He might teach us the light and hope and joy and unity to which the Father’s love brings us so as to make us completely ourselves.  . . . We are gathered here to receive Jesus, . . . and then we go.  We go from here to fulfill the sacred discipleship into which the Lord God Almighty has called each of us; . . . to be ministers of the Father’s love, . . . Who is Jesus, . . . and Who has authority to heal lives and to teach.