William H. Willimon - "Church, Interrupted" (January 30, 2000)

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-	I know a Methodist preacher,	0:12
	who on his first Sunday	0:14
	in a church	0:17
	in a small southern town,	0:18
	he moved through the service	0:22
	and he had been told the custom	0:23
	of this church was to	0:25
	have an altar call at the conclusion	0:27
	of the service.	0:31
	So, he ended his sermon and he said,	0:32
	"Now, if there are any who would like	0:34
	"to unite with this church by profession	0:35
	"of faith, if any would like to kneel	0:37
	"at the altar rail for prayer,	0:40
	"please feel free to come forward	0:43
	"during the singing of the last hymn."	0:45
	They began the last hymn.	0:49
	With that, a young man, toward the rear	0:51
	of the congregation, shrieked out	0:53
	and ran down the center aisle	0:56
	and he lept over the altar rail	0:59
	and threw his whole body on the altar.	1:01
	And he began screaming and beating	1:04
	upon the altar, and kicking and	1:06
	the young minister stood there, just horrified.	1:09
	And with that, two of the older ushers	1:12
	got up and loped over and helped the young man	1:15
	off the altar, helped him out a side door.	1:17
	This had evidently happened before.	1:21
	But it so unnerved the pastor	1:25
	he could barely make it through the rest of the service.	1:27
	I don't think he ever recovered from that, it was...	1:33
	He wasn't helped when some of his fellow	1:36
	Methodist ministers, hearing about it,	1:38
	said things like, "Well, when you give an altar call,	1:40
	"you really give an altar call, don't ya?"	1:42
	But of course, mental illness	1:46
	and emotional confusion,	1:49
	it's no laughing matter.	1:51
	Some of you know firsthand	1:55
	the hell of the tormented mind,	1:58
	in yourself or in someone you love.	2:02
	Where does one take such torment?	2:06
	Perhaps that screaming, troubled young man	2:11
	had taken his misery to the right place	2:15
	in taking it to church.	2:19
	Today's Gospel lesson	2:22
	is Jesus' very first sermon	2:26
	at the synagogue in Capernaum,	2:29
	from Mark 1:	2:33
	And they went to Capernaum;	2:36
	and immediately on the sabbath	2:37
	he entered into the synagogue, and he taught.	2:39
	And they were amazed at his teaching,	2:43
	because he taught as one who had authority,	2:45
	and not as the scribes.	2:47
	And immediately there was in that synagogue	2:49
	a man with an unclean spirit.	2:53
	And he cried out, "What have you to do with us,	2:56
	"Jesus of Nazareth?	2:59
	"Have you come to destroy us?	3:01
	"I know who you are, the Holy One of God."	3:02
	But Jesus rebuked him, saying,	3:07
	"Be silent, come out of him!"	3:10
	And the unclean spirit, convulsing him	3:13
	and crying out with a loud voice, came out of him.	3:15
	And they were all amazed,	3:20
	so that they questioned among themselves, saying,	3:22
	"What is this?	3:25
	"A new teaching?	3:26
	"With authority he commands even the unclean spirits,	3:30
	"and they obey him."	3:35
	This is the Word of the Lord.	3:38
	Jesus,	3:45
	the newest preacher in town,	3:48
	has just finished his first sermon at Capernaum.	3:49
	And as the hymn is being sung,	3:53
	this young man cries out in the middle of church,	3:55
	began shouting these vague threats	4:00
	at the preacher.	4:02
	"I know who you are," he says.	4:04
	Something howling deep within the man,	4:08
	"You're the holy one of God."	4:11
	And this happens in the synagogue	4:16
	on the holy sabbath.	4:18
	"Shut up," says Jesus,	4:21
	"Come out of him."	4:22
	Things were getting odd	4:26
	that day in Capernaum.	4:29
	The man fell on the floor,	4:32
	his arms beating wildly,	4:33
	his legs thrown out,	4:35
	people stepped back, gave him a wide circle,	4:38
	froths of foam,	4:43
	strange cries coming from his mouth.	4:44
	And then, the man grew strangely calm.	4:48
	A tranquil look came over his face.	4:52
	He lay very still.	4:55
	Slowly, he picked himself up.	4:59
	His eyes were clear	5:01
	and his voice calm and composed.	5:03
	"What is this," people asked.	5:10
	And it occurred in church,	5:15
	of all places.	5:17
	I've had the privilege of visiting	5:20
	at the synagogue of Capernaum,	5:21
	the archeological site.	5:23
	And they can show you the pulpit	5:27
	from which Jesus must have preached.	5:30
	When I was there,	5:34
	I fantasized in my mind,	5:35
	wondering, just where was it in the synagogue	5:37
	that this episode occurred	5:40
	right in the middle of the sabbath congregation.	5:42
	Such events are all the more remarkable in church	5:47
	because church is one of the most planned	5:50
	and ordered, and orderly	5:54
	of human gatherings.	5:57
	It's one of the most quiet and controlled times	6:00
	of the week, church.	6:02
	We gather, we sit quietly,	6:05
	fixed in rows of pews,	6:07
	everything measured and moderate.	6:10
	I can still remember, as a child,	6:12
	the pain, I guess it was the pain	6:14
	of having to sit quietly and still in church.	6:17
	Then, there're those rare occasions	6:24
	when there is some intrusion	6:26
	into our ordered solemnity.	6:29
	Say, someone slumps forward	6:32
	in the pew with a health crisis.	6:34
	Somebody in a shabby dress stumbles in off the street.	6:38
	Or a sleeping child wakes and begins to scream.	6:43
	And we're shaken by that intrusion,	6:48
	in church of all places.	6:52
	It's an interruption	6:56
	into what church is supposed to be.	6:57
	I've been known to tell my students	7:03
	at the divinity school,	7:04
	"You need to picture yourself as a pastor,	7:06
	"you're leading worship on Sunday morning,	7:09
	"and then, there's some unfortunate intrusion.	7:11
	"Someone has a health crisis,	7:15
	"somebody speaks out.	7:18
	"You need to picture in your mind	7:21
	"how you'll handle that,	7:22
	"as a pastor.	7:24
	"Will you call for an ambulance?	7:25
	"Would you look to the ushers	7:27
	"to help you out?	7:29
	"How would you handle this?"	7:30
	Because despite our best efforts	7:33
	as ministers and musicians,	7:34
	well, glitches, disturbances,	7:37
	interruptions, occur in church,	7:40
	of all places.	7:44
	It happened to Jesus.	7:47
	Awhile back, a student pastor,	7:50
	seminarian, was telling me	7:52
	that it's in his little church in eastern North Carolina,	7:54
	and as their custom was,	7:57
	he went to the service,	8:00
	he asked, "Are there any prayer requests?"	8:01
	And usually this was a ritual time,	8:05
	people stood up and gave thanks,	8:07
	a grandmother was visiting from Idaho,	8:09
	or someone said, "George got	8:11
	"through his gall bladder surgery okay	8:13
	"and we want to thank God for that."	8:15
	"The dog had puppies," whatever.	8:17
	But he said, on this Sunday,	8:21
	the first person to stand up	8:23
	said,	8:26
	"I don't know if any of you've heard or not, but	8:29
	"John left us last week	8:32
	"and I don't know what	8:36
	"the girls and I are going to do to survive."	8:38
	And that little church got real	8:46
	quiet.	8:49
	Because that was just a little more	8:51
	prayer	8:53
	than they wanted.	8:55
	Church can be so ordered	8:59
	and so graceful and beautiful,	9:01
	serene and still.	9:03
	Church	9:07
	so ordered is,	9:09
	it's the world as we would like it to be.	9:11
	Not just on Sunday mornings,	9:14
	but always.	9:15
	But of course, that's not the world.	9:19
	We got big, thick, oak doors on this place.	9:23
	But sometimes, things burst in those doors	9:29
	and church gets interrupted.	9:34
	This world, for all its beauty and grace,	9:38
	is also the world of the brokenhearted.	9:40
	This weekend, the musical, Fantastics,	9:44
	ha been playing on campus.	9:47
	And toward the end of the	9:48
	musical, this	9:50
	once naive young man and woman	9:51
	join in a song,	9:55
	only the heart	9:58
	that's been hurt	10:02
	is whole.	10:03
	Well, if that's true,	10:07
	then there's a lot of	10:07
	healthy hearts	10:09
	in the world.	10:11
	Because there's a lot of brokenness	10:13
	out there.	10:15
	Things just don't go well for people.	10:17
	That troubled man,	10:22
	screaming at Jesus that day,	10:24
	so full of demonic turmoil	10:27
	and possessed by this darkness,	10:30
	let him be a metaphor,	10:34
	a symbol,	10:36
	of all the chaotic confusion	10:38
	that sometimes, despite our best efforts	10:41
	on Sunday morning,	10:44
	buckles up, surges forth,	10:46
	breaks, intrudes,	10:48
	even in church,	10:51
	of all places.	10:52
	And I just don't know how well	10:56
	my nice middle class,	10:58
	middle-of-the-road	11:00
	church does	11:01
	with such darkness.	11:05
	We do better in the daylight,	11:09
	11 o'clock, Sunday morning.	11:11
	A couple of weeks ago,	11:15
	I was preaching up at Harvard Memorial Church	11:16
	and at the end of the service	11:19
	everybody filed out, a young man lingered.	11:20
	He said to me,	11:23
	he thanked me for the sermon,	11:26
	and he said,	11:28
	"I used to come to this church,	11:29
	"but I haven't been here in about a year."	11:31
	He said, "I've been going to this little church	11:35
	"out on the edge of town."	11:37
	And I said, "Why don't you attend here anymore?"	11:40
	And he said, "Oh, the music's beautiful,	11:44
	"and the preacher's always great, but,	11:46
	"but," he said, "about a year ago,	11:50
	"I lost my job.	11:51
	"I started drinking too much.	11:54
	"My girlfriend left me	11:57
	"and my life just fell apart.	12:00
	"And right about then,	12:04
	"kind of the way they do church here,	12:06
	"it just,	12:08
	"it wasn't enough."	12:10
	"And I go out to this little church	12:12
	"where the music is just a little more engaging,	12:14
	"and the preacher, every now and then,	12:18
	"will get in your face,	12:19
	"and,	12:20
	"and I thought, yeah, I just don't know	12:24
	"that my kind of church does that well	12:26
	"when it gets dark.	12:31
	"And there's a lot of dark out there,	12:35
	"in here."	12:39
	I recall a haunting story of a young boy's awareness	12:42
	of that darkness ahead.	12:47
	It's in Par Lagerkvist's story,	12:51
	My father and I.	12:54
	Par Lagerkvist tells about when he was a little boy,	12:56
	he and his father walked out one Sunday afternoon	12:59
	and suddenly the clouds came over	13:02
	and it was an early dark.	13:04
	It had gotten so dark they had no way	13:05
	to find their way back to their little village,	13:07
	except by following the train tracks back.	13:09
	And he said, "I walked beside my father.	13:14
	"I held tightly onto his hand	13:16
	"and I said, father, I'm afraid.	13:18
	"And my father looked down at me and said,	13:22
	"there's nothing to be afraid of.	13:24
	"I'm here and don't you know God is here?"	13:27
	But Par Lagerkvist said,	13:32
	"It didn't help.	13:35
	"I still felt this odd sense of fear."	13:36
	And there, in the darkness,	13:41
	right about that time,	13:42
	from out of nowhere,	13:43
	he says,	13:45
	"As we were rounding the bend,	13:48
	"suddenly there was a mighty roar behind us.	13:49
	"We were awakened out of our thoughts, alarmed.	13:52
	"Father pulled me down the embankment,	13:55
	"down into an abyss,	13:57
	"held me there.	13:58
	"A train tore past,	14:00
	"a black train,	14:02
	"all the lights in the carriages were out.	14:03
	"It was going at frantic speed.	14:06
	"What sort of train was it?	14:08
	"There wasn't one due now.	14:11
	"We gazed at it in terror.	14:13
	"The fire blazed in the huge engines,	14:14
	"sparks whirled in the night.	14:16
	"It was terrible.	14:18
	"The driver stood there in the light of the fire,	14:19
	"pale, motionless, his features as though stone.	14:22
	"Father didn't recognize him.	14:27
	"The driver just stared straight ahead,	14:28
	"as though intent only on rushing into the darkness,	14:32
	"far into the darkness that had no end.	14:35
	"And then, it was gone.	14:41
	"We climbed back up in the embankment.	14:44
	"We walked in silence.	14:45
	"My whole body was shaking.	14:49
	"It was for me,	14:52
	"for my sake.	14:54
	"I knew what it meant.	14:56
	"It was the anguish that was to come.	14:59
	"It was the unknown.	15:02
	"It was all that Father could never protect me from.	15:04
	"That was how this world, this life,	15:09
	"would be for me.	15:11
	"It wouldn't be like Father's,	15:12
	"where everything was secure and certain.	15:14
	"It just hurdled past,	15:18
	"blazing	15:20
	"into the darkness ahead."	15:22
	Some of you are young,	15:27
	bright future,	15:30
	but you're smart enough to know	15:33
	there is this darkness ahead.	15:35
	Oh, the darkness ahead	15:41
	on this crisp, Sunday,	15:42
	this fourth Sunday after Epiphany, the season of light.	15:44
	What of the darkness that intrudes into life?	15:49
	The confusion bubbles up,	15:56
	and cracks through the crust of sanity.	15:58
	What the answer?	16:05
	What does Jesus do with that darkness?	16:08
	Did you not hear	16:14
	today's Gospel?	16:17
	Jesus rebuked,	16:21
	"Be silent,	16:24
	"come out of him."	16:25
	The unclean spirit, convulsing and crying out	16:26
	with a loud voice, came out	16:28
	and they all were amazed and they questioned,	16:29
	"What is this?	16:32
	"With authority, he commands even the unclean spirits.	16:36
	"What is this?"	16:45
	It's Jesus,	16:50
	intruding.	16:52
	Not only that day at Capernaum,	16:56
	not only that	16:58
	wild, tormented man intruded,	17:00
	but also Jesus intruded.	17:03
	With a word of authority over the darkness,	17:06
	we find difficult even to name.	17:10
	When my sister's son died,	17:16
	on his 16th birthday,	17:18
	she was thrown into terrible grief,	17:21
	world shaken.	17:24
	A couple of months after her son's death,	17:27
	she was surprised in the middle of the afternoon,	17:30
	a doorbell rang and standing there	17:32
	was this Episcopal priest.	17:35
	He lived a couple of blocks away.	17:37
	She did not know him that well,	17:39
	he was not her pastor.	17:41
	This Episcopal priest standing there on the doorstep,	17:44
	he said, "Well, how are ya doing?"	17:46
	And she said, "Well, I think I'm doing fine.	17:49
	"I think I'm coping just fine."	17:51
	And he said,	17:54
	"You're lying.	17:56
	"Go in there, put on a pot of coffee.	17:59
	"We got to do business."	18:01
	And she said, "With that, I just melted into his arms	18:04
	"in this flood of grief.	18:07
	"For two hours he stayed there.	18:10
	"We talked.	18:12
	"He allowed himself to be exposed to that much pain."	18:13
	Looking back, she said,	18:20
	"I'll always be grateful for that pushy priest."	18:21
	Jesus	18:29
	is pushy.	18:30
	He enters the hurt	18:33
	that we dare not know how to speak its name,	18:35
	the darkness ahead,	18:38
	he rebukes it, commands it to depart,	18:40
	he stills the troubled spirit	18:44
	of those in torment.	18:47
	He is the holy one of God	18:48
	intruding among us,	18:51
	enters the pain,	18:53
	confronts the evil,	18:54
	takes charge,	18:56
	heals the broken heart.	18:57
	Amen.	19:02

Item Info

Title:

William H. Willimon - "Church, Interrupted" (January 30, 2000)

Description:

Sermon start time: (Part 1) 0:12. Sermon end time: (Part 1) 19:07.
In this season of Epiphany, the season of light, the preacher assures his audience that though the church, like the world, is full of beauty and grace, it is also a realm of the broken hearted. Jesus, the Light, enters the darkness of pain, evil, suffering, and illness, and mends what is broken. (Abstract created by Duke Divinity School staff.)

Permalink:

https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r4pk07h36

Date:

January 30, 2000

Speaker:

Willimon, William H.

Liturgical Calendar:

Epiphany

Biblical Book:

Mark

Chapter and Verse:

Mark 1:21-28

Subject:

Contributor:

Duke University. Chapel

Identifier:

UA.17.01.0003 CS-0996
ref10149_j23
uachapelsermaud
duke:321087
dcrau001640
ark:/87924/r4pk07h36
6dd5fad0-22b5-456f-9417-b44439a9a4fa

Digital Collection:

Duke Chapel Recordings

Source Collection:

Duke University Chapel recordings, 1954-2005

Related Resources:

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Language:

English

Location:

United States
North Carolina
Durham (N.C.)

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Provenance:

The Duke University Chapel Recordings were transferred to the Duke University Archives beginning in 1970.

Rights:

Limited Re-Use

CC BY-NC 4.0

Rights Note:

This recording may contain 3rd party materials, such as music or readings that are therefore not covered by the Creative Commons license indicated here. For more information see https://library.duke.edu/rubenstein/research/citations-and-permissions.

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William H. Willimon - "Church, Interrupted" (January 30, 2000)

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1. William H. Willimon - "Church, Interrupted" (January 30, 2000)

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William H. Willimon - "Church, Interrupted" (January 30, 2000)

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