“Jesus Unmasked” Mark
Intro.: Recently, one of our members loaned some DVD’s
to me on which are recorded some of the first episodes of Superman. One thing that has always interested me about
Superman is his mask. While most other
superheroes wear masks while being “super” to hide their everyday identity,
Superman wears his mask of glasses and a mild manner in his everyday life to
hide his super identity. When I watch
those old episodes of Superman, I wonder how dense can Lois and Jimmie be. They spend all that time with
In a similar way, Jesus remains hidden
behind a mask for many. In His state of
humiliation, hidden beneath His humble human nature there is His more than
super identity; His divine nature. But some never seem to get beyond “the
glasses”. They look at him and see a
great moral teacher or a prophet but never recognize Him for who He is, and who
must be for them to have life and salvation.
The season of Epiphany is for the revelation of Christ to the
world. It is the time for all those who
have never been able to get beyond the humanity of Jesus to see Him for who He
truly is – the Son of God and Savior.
In today’s Gospel the divinity of our Lord
is made manifest when He teaches with authority and destroys the power of
evil. In these events Jesus is unmasked
so that we may believe and spread the Good News.
I.
Teaching With Authority.
A. In our Old Testament we hear that God’s
people were terrified by the unmasked presence of the Lord at
B. This authoritative preaching of Jesus was
something noticeably different from that to which the people were accustomed. His teaching was so unlike that of the
teachers of the law. Those men were
often contemptuous and mean, carrying on about traditions, with intricate
detail to legal pettiness and concerned only with the preservation of their own
power and position. They had little concern
for the people to whom they spoke and were always occupied with infinitely
small things. There was some moral
significance to what they said, and an occasional nugget of truth, but it was
buried so deep beneath a mountain of Levitical
minutiae that it was hard to discern.
They could go on and on about the length of fringes and width of
phylacteries, the washing of cups and platters, and the particular second when
the new moons and Sabbath’s began.
But Jesus when Jesus spoke it was
different. He taught something seemingly
“new” and in a new and authoritative way at that.
C. Jesus’ teaching put men and God in their
proper places, again. It was the
teaching of man’s damnable sin and God’s heavenly grace.
Illustrate: A Pastor once wrote of an experience in the
early years of his ministry when He had just gotten well into the sermon, and a
baby started crying down in one of the front pews. “The mother,” he recounts, “very much
embarrassed, snatched up the baby and started out the aisle aisle.
I stopped right in my sermon, and said, ’Madam you don’t hove to take that baby
out. He isn’t bothering me.’ She said, ’No?’ Well, you’re certainly bothering
him.’
Jesus’ authoritative teaching bothered a lot
of people, and still does today as it puts us in our place as spiritually dead
and blind objects of God’s wrath. We
don’t like to hear the Lord declaring us to be people who of ourselves cannot properly
love Him nor offer any form of obedience which could make us worthy of Him. Like those at
But there is another authoritative
teaching which Christ offers. It is the
teaching which puts God in His proper place at the center of all. It is the divine Word of God’s mercy and
grace, assuring us that whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. It is that authoritative Word which declares
to us; that the righteousness we could not offer - Christ has offered for us;
that the wage of death we had earned by our sins - He paid for us through His
suffering and death upon the cross; and that the life and salvation we could
not secure – He gives us through His own resurrection and ascension into heaven
where He has gone to prepare a place for us.
There are so many world religions, and so many
teachers of the law, but it doesn’t take long to discover that the teaching of
Jesus is different. Others may speak
about God, but God only speaks to us through His Son. He is the One who speaks with divine power
and authority to crush our sinful pride, and create in us new hearts and minds. When we hear His Word it becomes evident that
all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Him,
and through Him to His Church. In the
Gospel of Word and Sacrament we know that Christ brings divine power into our
lives to bring us salvation. In our
lives as in our Gospel lesson the deity of Jesus reveals itself in all that he
says, shining forth with overwhelming force, and then His glory is unmasked.
The other way in which the deity of Christ was revealed in our Gospel was in...
II. Destroying The Power Of Evil.
Earlier I mentioned that when Jesus
teaches some people are bothered. A
perfect example of this is that after hearing His teaching a demon who had
taken possession of a man from the city disrupted the Sabbath service.
A. The evil spirit knew who Jesus was and for
what reason He had come into the world.
Suddenly, all at once, our lesson says, a demoniac who was afflicted by
an “unclean spirit” burst into the synagogue.
Our NIV translation is poor. What
the evil spirit actually shouts at Jesus has the meaning: “Leave
us alone. You have come to ruin us and our works. I know who you are. You are the Holy One of God!” It is thought that the demon made this
revelation out of spite, knowing that Jesus wanted the people to know Him
through His Word and teaching, and not the rantings
of a demon. One thing is for certain
this demon, speaking on behalf of all of Satan’s agents knew what was happening, and what would soon happen, and was
afraid. The day was coming soon when the
power of the darkness and evil would be overthrown by the Holy One of God,
Jesus Christ.
B. Instantly Jesus demonstrated His divine power
over the spiritual realm, as He silenced the witness of the demon and delivered
the man who had been possessed. “Be silent!” Jesus commanded, “Come out of Him!” And the
demon could not resist, but had to obey Christ’s command. He violently shook the man whose life he had
overtaken, and came out of him with a blood curdling shriek. And just like that, Jesus defeated the power
of evil, and released the tortured soul of the man.
C. In doing this Jesus showed Himself to be
exactly who the demon said He was: the
Holy One of God who has come to destroy the power of the devil, and ruin the
works of darkness. The greater victory
was yet to come, when upon the cross, surrounded by the forces of darkness and
taunted by the voices of evil Jesus laid down His life to silence the
accusations of Satan, destroy the power of demons, and forever ruin their work
against us. On the third day the mask
was totally removed when He rose again in victory to assure us that Satan and
his dominion had lost their power and death had lost its sting. In demonstrating His power to destroy evil,
Jesus revealed His more than super, divine nature...
III. So That We May Know Him And Believe.
A. In our Gospel Jesus lifted His mask to show
us who He really is, the Son of God who has come into the world to redeem His
people from their sins, and deliver them from their bondage to sin, death and
the power of the devil.
Out of love for us He still does not speak
to us as thunder from a mountain and does not appear to us as a consuming fire,
but humbly beneath a
mask which is lifted only by the faith worked in us by the Holy
Spirit. He comes to us behind the mask
of that broken and bruised body upon the cross, which is foolish and scandalous
to those who do not have the Holy Spirit.
He teaches us with divine authority, but it is hidden under the written
and spoken Word. And He casts out evil with
His divine power, working in the plain waters of baptism and in His body and
blood hidden beneath the bread and wine of His Holy Supper.
B. And yet, but the working of the Holy Spirit,
we see the mask lifted, and we know that Jesus is the Son of God our
Savior. Just as with the people of our
Gospel lesson gathered at the synagogue, Jesus wants us to know Him. He wants us to know the Father through Him,
and in knowing to believe the Good News of our forgiveness, life and salvation.
C. He wants us to believe His “new” teaching, that whoever believes and is baptized shall be saved, that
the time has come and the
D. He now works through us to spread the news
about Him. Our Gospel concludes by
telling us that after being so amazed by what they heard and saw, “News about (Jesus) spread quickly over the
whole region of
May the Lord see
fit to use us to quickly spread the news about Him, so that others may see Him
for who He is the Son of God, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit is
forever praised.
Amen!