“It’s a Tough Job, but Someone’s Got to do It” Mark 1:21-28 January 28, 2024 Rev. Annie Cass Watson, Holy Family Catholic Church

 “It’s a Tough Job, but Someone’s Got to do It”

Mark 1:21-28

January 28, 2024

Rev. Annie Cass Watson, Holy Family Catholic Church

Have you ever had a thankless job, a job that no one else wants? If you google world’s most difficult jobs, one of the most common themes is that they often involve some sort of cleaning. Cleaning jobs are hard work. Maybe the hardest.

I believe the church is in the cleaning business. Our job is to find people who believe they are spiritually dirty, dusty, grimy, unclean, unworthy, and unloved, and convince them that they are in fact spiritually clean, worthy, and loved. It’s a tough job, but someone’s got to do it.

God’s first cleaning crew consisted of the Hebrew prophets. Talk about a tough job! It’s amazing that anyone ever applied for the job of Hebrew prophet. People didn’t like being told how dirty or messy they are, so many of the prophets were persecuted, imprisoned, or even killed. Being God’s cleaning crew was a tough and thankless job, but someone had to do it. 

John the Baptizer continued God’s cleaning business with his rite of baptism. John’s interpretation of baptism was that it is a “washing away of sins,” a cleansing of the soul. While many people responded well to John, others didn’t like his cleaning services, especially Herod Antipas, who had him killed.

Like the Hebrew prophets and John the Baptist, Jesus was also part of God’s cleaning crew. In fact, as Christians we believe Jesus is the CEO of God’s cleaning business. At the very least, he owns a chain of franchise cleaning businesses. 

In the Gospel stories, people are always checking on Jesus’ credentials, from Herod the Great at his birth to Pontius Pilate on the day he died, and a lot of Pharisees and Sadducees in between. Not everyone believed he was such a crucial part of God’s cleaning business. Sometimes, those who did believe it, didn’t want his services. I guess some people enjoy the dirt, dust, and grime of an unclean soul. 

One day, Jesus enters a synagogue and offers to do a little sweeping and mopping in their hearts. Teaching in the synagogue was normal for a visiting rabbi, but he was more than that, wasn’t he?

He absolutely wows and astounds them with his words. He’s quite the sparkling speaker. If he were a janitor, that synagogue would have passed a white glove inspection. However, after his lecture, someone “with an unclean spirit” lets Jesus know that his efforts at cleaning up the mess of humanity is not appreciated by everyone. 

Most people see this man as “demon possessed” in a sensationalized Hollywood sort of way, but I suggest a more practical alternative interpretation of this story. I suggest this man has been declared ritually unclean by the Jewish religious authorities in Capernaum. 

The word “unclean” in the Bible refers to a state of religious impurity or defilement, which could be caused by a variety of factors such as skin diseases, discharges of bodily fluids, touching something dead, or eating unclean foods. If an unclean person entered a sanctuary, he was threatened with death because he would make everyone around him unclean as well.

The unclean man accuses Jesus of wanting to “destroy us,” meaning, in Mark’s version of this story, the entire congregation. Why? What is he afraid of? Is he afraid of Jesus drawing attention to their synagogue, a community that apparently allows people who are ritually unclean to participate in their worship? Are they afraid of being excommunicated?

The unclean man identifies Jesus as “the Holy One of God.” He tells the man to be silent because he knows that “outing” him might lead to further harassment from the authorities and spell more trouble for this faithful, loving, and inclusive community. 

He even commands the man’s uncleanness—what Mark calls an “unclean spirit”—to come out of him, which is why we normally interpret this man as “demon possessed.” Possessed or not, this man likely believes he is a hopeless cause.

So when Jesus verbally and authoritatively removes the uncleanness, the man has a dramatic conversion experience, crying and convulsing with deep sobs. It is a powerful moment. He is now “clean,” something he never expected would happen to him. 

The crucial thing to note about this story is that one of the hallmarks of Jesus’ ministry is declaring unclean people clean. In one story after another in the Gospels, Jesus helps the unclean become clean:

He declares lepers to be clean, eats with tax collectors, prostitutes, and all manner of “sinners,” heals a Canaanite woman’s daughter and a Roman Centurion’s slave, talks to a Samaritan woman at the well, reintroduces a cemetery-dwelling mentally ill man to civilization, heals a woman with a hemorrhage and a slave’s bloody ear, heals a boy who is foaming at the mouth, heals a crippled woman and a man with dropsy on the Sabbath, and heals the blind, deaf, and mute at every turn. In all of these stories, Jesus risks his own cleanness, but he is not concerned about that.

Jesus had a tough job. Guess who has that job now? We do. Our job description is straightforward: Find people, befriend people who believe they are dirty, dusty, grimy, unclean, unworthy, and unloved, whether they are “out there” or even “in here” (like the man with the unclean spirit in our story today), and declare to them convincingly that they are in fact clean, worthy, and loved. 

It’s a tough job, but someone’s got to do it.