Reading: Mark 1: 21-28
January is always a good time for reflection. Down at Busselton, along the bay, a warm sun beating down and the crystal clear water so blue and inviting. That`s where I have been for day days recharging, renewing and reenergising. And focussing on 2012.

When I was thinking of what direction we may take in this coming year, I was prompted by a book I was reading, (in between a number of trashy murder mysteries).

The book was called The Future of Faith, by Harvey Cox. While many would say that faith has no future, particularly the atheists, he has other ideas. He actually thinks it may survive longer than we think and is pretty optimistic. But we need to be careful what we mean by faith. Faith is a loaded term and varies greatly between people.

Cox certainly does not see a future in a faith guided by dogmatic beliefs and age old certainties and by a religion unable or unwilling to incorporate findings from our scientific age. But neither does he draw us to a faith that is totally rational and scientific, that needs external proof for its very existence. No he describes faith based on trust, a trust in something profound and mystical. A faith that is a way of life, lived every day, rather than a set of rules to be followed. It is a faith of the heart rather than the head and closer to the faith of the first disciples than the church that grew up around them. To be a Christian in the early years was to live within God`s spirit, embrace the hope of a new era of freedom, healing and compassion and to follow Jesus in the work that he had begun. In fact Cox called this time the age of faith.

For this understanding of faith to thrive and prosper today a lot of things need to change within the Christian community. Because it was mostly lost as the church developed. What started out as an age of faith immediately after Jesus` death, in Cox`s view, ended up as the age of belief. The bible and all the writings it contained began to be interpreted in a literal sense, creeds were formed, many for political rather than spiritual reasons and theological pronouncements made to determine who was in and who was out of the Christian family. Instead of faith in Jesus, faith became a set of beliefs about Jesus. To be a Christian one had to believe that Jesus had a virgin birth, led a perfect sin free life, died as a ransom for many and was physically resurrected from the dead to life everlasting somewhere in the heavens. Tied along this was the idea of original sin, born from Augustine in the 4th century but forever linked with Christianity. Faith became an external belief system. When you believed these things then you would be saved for a new life elsewhere.

So what does a modern person do with this? Well you could view Tim Minchin`s Christmas song to get an idea. For those you don`t know Tim he is a very talented comedian and musician and uses religion for much of his comedy. However he excelled himself with this song. He called the song `praise be to Jesus` and with each refrain adds a description of Jesus based on a biblical event in Jesus life. So we have the Woody Allen, magic, zombie, superman, Komoto dragon, telepathic, vampire, hovercraft Jesus.

What he is doing is poking fun of the virgin birth, the physical resurrection, the miracles, the post resurrection appearances and communion. While the song itself is not particularly accurate, and you can see it for yourself on YouTube, it points to a very serious dilemma we all face. For it is poking fun at the Jesus many of us don`t really believe in either.

As David Tacy says, those who want to be modern and religious at the same time have a great deal of difficulty with all these dogmas, with many dismissing them as ridiculous and unbelievable. Western religion is still couched in a metaphysical and mythological framework that does not make sense to the modern mind. Many would find Minchin`s song pretty funny. But not all throw everything out. Rather some find other religious traditions to follow, which don`t have the same baggage. They may become spiritual but not religious.

So things are changing, particularly outside the church. We have come to a time that is post modern, post enlightenment, post everything. People are searching for meaning and purpose, and want a faith to guide their life. As Tacy says, the world is already expressing its appetite for the unseen and the invisible, for the things of the spirit. And this is where we have a role to play for ourselves and for others within a Christian framework.

We have entered, as Cox suggests, a different age, the Age of the Spirit. In this age personal experiences of the divine have become more important, while the statements of belief have become less important. Here science is playing a major role, particularly evolutionary science and the science of the cosmos. In this age God has become a God within, rather than a power over and faith becomes something to live rather than acquire. And Jesus is seen far more than a miracle worker.

Brian McLaren, in his book Finding our way again, says it well.

`If the modern era can be characterised by a cold war between scientific and religious belief systems, then the post modern era can best be characterised by a search for spirituality, a word that somehow captures this idea of a viable, sustainable, meaningful way of life. After centuries of a relationship almost always characterised by the term `versus`, the scientific and religious communities seem to realise that we need to move beyond our deadlock, our polarisation, our binary either/or thinking regarding faith and reason, religion and science, matter and spirit. The word spiritual captures this reintegration for us.`

The age of the spirit then is a return to the faith more similar to our early forebears than the middle and late ages. It is a recombining of all that has gone before. Our shared community, our traditions modified by our scientific knowledge and our own experiences of the divine all contribute to a life of faith in the Christian sense. This faith is not something that is acquired by believing certain things but something that is lived. A way of life based on the life of Jesus and energised by God`s indwelling spirit. A life of faith that is both social and personal, calling us to each other and the world.

So now we come to the nitty gritty. With our increasing knowledge of science and history, and our move away from literalism, our greater sense of the divine in all of life, what do we make of the gospel reading today? Surprisingly, it says much the same, if we read it in context.

Jesus was known throughout the Mediterranean as a healer. There are 13 healings in the synoptic gospels, and the four exorcisms found in Mark were part of this overall package. He healed mostly with words, and usually very quickly, and was always focussed on the person rather than laws or rules they may or may not have followed. Supernatural is not a word used in these stories, rather they were referred to as mighty deeds or deeds of power.

While affirming the description of Jesus as a healer, the Jesus Seminar had difficulty in finding stories it believed to be reports of actual cures. Most of the reports seem to have been shaped by the later tradition. But that is less important that what the underlying message was to Jesus listeners and to us today.

When we read that he silences the demon and demands he departs, he is liberating the person left behind. Just as he did with the healings of blindness and leprosy, dumbness, fever, near death or paralysis, he heals the possessed. Healing the illness rather than curing the disease. He is releasing the person from the demon bondage that is destroying him, from the powers that bind him up.

Many scholars have interpreted this reading as having a political agenda, with the demons representing the powers of Jerusalem, both political and religious who have enslaved and marginalised its people by their rules and laws. But maybe it is more personal than that. Bill Loader feels sometimes we cannot interpret everything in the light of liberation theology. People of the first century did believe in demons and possession, and for them this imprisonment was real and personal. Therefore Jesus` liberation was real and personal.

But we must be careful here not to see it as magic. Jesus did not aim to become a magician who healed at will to show his power. It was about the spirit of God, which leads people to true faith, not the superficial faith based on a couple of supernatural events. The Jesus found in Mark encourages his followers to look at the deeper meaning of the healing or exorcism just as we are. He constantly discourages people from dwelling too much on the actual act. Instead he healed to show the power of the Holy Spirit, a power that can nourish and renew and break the bonds of those things that limit our humanity. He healed to emphasise that his teaching had authority. The mighty deeds of Jesus were seen as a product of the spirit of God that flowed through him. That could change people`s lives if they and we make space for it. As Bill says, `Mark leaves us in no doubt about what constituted good news for Jesus in this world: it is life in the spirit`.

So in 2012 let us enter the Age of the Spirit at Wembley Downs. Let us increase our knowledge of science, of church history and tradition and develop our spiritual selves. Let us find ways to connect to the divine within all of us, either through mediation, worship, in community and in our day to day actions. As Val Webb suggests, let us live this faith, this spirituality in the world by being part of it, rediscovering the sacred in the immanent, the spiritual in the secular and the divine in our own everyday experiences.

Let us all keep this faith alive. For this is the type of faith that will prosper and grow into the future.