Sin is a Demon Lurking at The Door
Piety
So the LORD said to Cain: “Why are you so resentful and crestfallen. If you do well, you can hold up your head; but if not, sin is a demon lurking at the door: his urge is toward you, yet you can be his master.” Genesis 4:6-7
The Pharisees came forward and began to argue with Jesus, seeking from him a sign from heaven to test him. He sighed from the depth of his spirit and said, “Why does this generation seek a sign? Amen, I say to you, no sign will be given to this generation.” Mark 8:11-12
Study
In Mark’s Gospel alone, consider what Jesus has done up until this point [The Roman numerals in brackets indicate the chapter where Mark shares these stories in his Gospel]:
- [I]Curing the Demonic
- Curing Simon’s Mother-in-Law
- Other Healings not enumerated
- Curing the Leper
- [II]Curing the Paralytic let in from the roof
- [III] Man with the withered hand
- [IV] Calming a storm at sea
- [V] The Healing of the Gerasene Demoniac
- Jairus’s Daughter
- The Woman with a Hemorrhage
- Feeding the Five Thousand
- Walking on Water
- Healings at Gennesaret
- The Syrophoenician Woman’s Daughter
- The Deaf Man
- The Feeding of the Four Thousand
This list only covers Jesus’ work in the first eight chapters of Mark’s Good News. It does not include the details of some large-scale episodes only summarized. It does not include the work the apostles accomplished when they were commissions and went out in the world.
People were talking about this work even when Jesus asked them to keep quiet. (“What’s the buss? Tell me what’s happening?”) Now, after this track record, Jesus gets into another dust-up with the Doubting Pharisees who demand yet another sign. Their objection: Jesus’ miracles up to this point are insufficient if they were not there to see them with their own eyes.
Jesus rolls his own eyes and basically says that he will work when and where he chooses but he is not a circus act performing to the will of the ticket-buying crowd. Jesus will not perform any sign or miracle to human demand that does not originate in faith exhibited like that of the Syrophoenician woman who asked (not demanded) that her daughter be cured.
We’ve been here before. Well, not us but Moses. Remember that the Lord was as upset with Moses and the people as Jesus is exasperated in today’s encounter.
And the LORD said to Moses: How long will this people spurn me? How long will they not trust me, despite all the signs I have performed among them? (Numbers 14:11)
The LORD answered: I pardon them as you have asked. Yet, by my life and the LORD’s glory that fills the whole earth, of all the people who have seen my glory and the signs I did in Egypt and in the wilderness, and who nevertheless have put me to the test ten times already and have not obeyed me, not one shall see the land which I promised on oath to their ancestors. None of those who have spurned me shall see it. (20-23)
Action
Sin and Doubt are the demons knocking at the door. Jesus does not expect his followers to have faith in the bells and tassels of the Pharisees. He wants a relationship with them directly. Today, that can be hard when we are confronted weekly with the revelation-by-revelation of the abuse crisis.
Our modern-day Pharisees might wear the regalia of an abusing priest, a bishop or a diocesan official who covered up the crimes with secrecy. Last week, new abuser lists were put out in Arlington, Trenton, Brooklyn, and Richmond. Hundreds of more priests were added to the ranks of serial abusers and bishops in New York, New Jersey, and Virginia are now added to the ranks of the cover-up artists. Yet one of those lists fails to note a parish abuse story covered prominently in the pages of the Washington Post.
As noted by Michael Rezendes, a member of the Boston Globe Spotlight Team that revealed the cover-up of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church, “It is difficult to exaggerate the crisis that has engulfed the Catholic Church due to unending revelations about priests who have sexually abused children, young adults — even nuns — and the bishops who have covered up for them.[i]
Stephen Pope, a Boston College theology professor, said Pope Francis “has good intentions.” But he also said it’s time for the Vatican to address the increasingly urgent calls for change coming from within the church.
“The church can no longer be an island of secrecy and privilege,” he said. “There has to be transparency and accountability. The church’s survival depends on it.”[ii]
Maybe our church’s survival depends more upon our relationship with the cornerstone: Jesus Christ and the cross he carried on his back and the nail in his hands and feet. We are not called to have faith in a building or a bishop. If that is all that our faith is built upon, we are bound to be as disappointed as the sign-seeking Pharisees.
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