Liberation Sunday: When Leaders are Liberators, Christians Sing God’s Praises
Deuteronomy 18:15-20; 1 Corinthians 7:32-35; Mark 1:21-28
More than anything else, the image and personality of Moses evoke liberation. He is the presence and face of God in the liberation from Egypt and the journey to the Promised Land. Even when Moses plays the role of mediator between the people and God, it is still the image of liberation from God’s punishment due to sin that comes through—a mediator is also a liberator. When Moses gives God’s commandments to the people on Mount Sinai, it is also the charter of rights and means of liberation that comes to the people through the law, no wonder some call it the “law of Moses”.
Two points come across strongly in our first reading today. The first is that God alone liberates and he guarantees liberation by the assurance that his people always have a liberator among them, so he makes this promise: “A prophet like me will the Lord, your God, raise up for you from among your own kin; to him you shall listen”. Secondly, God is aware that self-proclaimed liberators too will rear their ugly heads; consequently, he forewarns his people about the lots of fake prophets: “But if a prophet presumes to speak in my name an oracle that I have not commanded him to speak, or speaks in the name of other gods, he shall die.’” Therefore, liberation comes from listening to the prophet the Lord sends to his people, and the refusal to listen to false or self-acclaimed prophets.
Jesus comes to us, in our gospel reading, as a liberator and mediator promised in our first reading. Jesus enters the Synagogue today to bring the message of liberation to his compatriots, to those in the house of God. In the Synagogue, evil spirits, oppressing a poor man, on noticing his presence, plea for clemency against destruction. While the possessed man receives healing from Jesus as a sign of liberation from the forces of evil, instead of destruction, Jesus provides an amnesty and liberation to the evil spirits. It is this twin liberations that manifest the “authority” of Jesus, for which he becomes an instant celebrity and a famous preacher.
Notice that the Synagogue provides the place of meeting with Jesus and contact with his teaching. The synagogue’s congregation or attendees affirm the congruency and fidelity between the teachings of Jesus and the tradition of the scribes, but were enthused by an added novelty — the power or authority of the teaching! Instead of destroying the Old Testament teachings, Jesus fulfills them creatively! The power God promises through Moses, in our first reading, finds fulfillment in Jesus’ healing and liberation of the possessed man.
In our second reading, Paul picks up the topic of inner imprisonment/possession — like the case of the possessed man in need of inner or spiritual liberation and freedom — in today’s gospel. Instead of evil spirits, Paul presents the possible colonial and slavish power of anxieties upon the human person. Today, those “anxieties” are the stresses of life that make us sick and keep us unhappy. The stress of married life, the stress of technological discoveries, the stress of running after dollars, the stress of wars and rumors of wars, the stress of manufactured and doctored lies, the stress of infidelity and neoliberal consumerism, etc. The human person needs liberation from all these anxieties and stresses. According to our second reading, Paul says, “I am telling you this for your own benefit, not to impose a restraint upon you, but for the sake of propriety and adherence to the Lord without distraction”. What is the solution?
Jesus, the new Moses, is the source of our liberation. The teachings of Jesus, the gospels, de-stress us and bring us liberation and healing. This is why the teachings of Jesus are called “gospels”—good news! Jesus brings us the good news through his presence and his teaching. The logic of our second reading is that, although one may not drive out evil spirits, the minimum is to help alleviate people’s anxieties, when they come to God’s house instead of worsening their situation. Also, by emphasizing the reality of anxieties, Paul suggests that Christians are part of the solution to their problems — they need to avoid anxieties. The best way to avoid anxieties, according to Paul, is to focus on God exclusively and make everything else secondary: “I should like you to be free of anxieties. An unmarried man is anxious about the things of the Lord, how he may please the Lord . . . An unmarried woman or a virgin is anxious about the things of the Lord”. This every Christian could do for herself/himself.
However, what is obvious in our world today, in our churches, is that very few prophets are present, prophets like Jesus. One notices very few cases of liberation from anxieties and worries. The voices of many preachers bring sorrow and distress in place of liberation to those who go to church. In fact, the insults reserved for those who don’t go to church are often visited on those who are present in church. Not only that evil spirits roam freely in our churches, their actions are often denied or sometimes celebrated as punishments for sinners.
Our churches today are the synagogues where to hear the teachings of Jesus. But that is not the end of the story. There is more: the teaching we hear must come with authority, like Jesus’ in the Synagogue of Capernaum. In other words, the house of God must be in the hands of God’s leaders not self-appointed individuals. According to our first reading, God promises to appoint replacements for Moses himself: “I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their kin, and will put my words into his mouth; he shall tell them all that I command him”. When some church leaders invent miracles and tell lies in the name of God to become celebrities, the inner slavery of churchgoers remains, and the testimonies of church attendees convoluted. When God’s spirit is absent from preachers and church leaders, especially when their moral lives are bankrupt and substituted for with human rhetorics and intelligence, the evil spirits in the church celebrate their captivity and provincial rule of possessed children of God, and churchgoers are worse off than those who remain at home.
The joy of the gospel and the liberation it brings do not need journalists’ and media’s corroborations, that joy oozes out effortlessly in the exemplary lives of Christians and in their praises of God. Truth needs no media outlet to sell it, so is joy; both become second natures and are carried and shared around and defended without a legal certification or degree. When church leaders are liberators, Christians never fail to sing the praises of God.
Assignment for the Week:
Share some good news with someone that will liberate them from sadness and bring them joy.