GREAT THINGS ENTERPRISE
CLAUDE BLACK
MARK 1:1
Be Careful Who Your Bring to Church
In a large, multi-cultural, inner-city church, the pastor invited people to come to the altar for prayer at the end of the service, then he said, “Women, be sure to bring your purse with you, for everyone in this congregation does not practice what we preach.” A man in another church had an investment and financial management business, and many congregants used his services. However, he invested his customers’, his fellow church members’, money in his own investment schemes to enrich himself. His financial designs fell apart, and the church members lost the money they invested in his business.
In St. Mark’s Gospel, a synagogue leader invited Jesus to present the Sabbath Scripture reading and lesson. “And then, a man with an unclean spirit was in their synagogue, and he cried out.” (1:23) The man in this story was in the right place, but he brought an unclean spirit to the Synagogue. Mark’s word ‘unclean’ consists of an alpha privative, a ‘not,’ and the word for ‘pure,’ ‘cleanse,’ or ‘purify,’ so this word could be rendered as ‘ugly.’ In Mark’s story, an unclean spirit alongside the spirit of the man led him to cry out, interrupting Jesus’ lesson.
It seems that people still bring ugly, or unclean, spirits to church. Pilfering women’s purses or swindling investors’ money are only a few examples of ugly spirits manifesting themselves at church. I have to be careful not to bring an ugly spirit to church. You?
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