This morning’s Gospel text presents us with a kind of musical piece in three movements or a play in three acts. Or maybe think of an appetizer, the main course, and some seasoning. That’s it! Appetizer, main course, and seasoning. They are three different sayings that just happen to be together in Mark, but not in Matthew or Luke.

First the appetizer. “Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us.” You ever notice how we are always trying to organize God? How God is comfortable with chaos and we aren’t? We have to have everything all nice, neat, and tidy, packed away in boxes with labels on them, and God just seems to go and dump things out on the floor and messes around with everything. Yes, God is a God of order, and He brings creative order out of the chaos. But God also seems to have a penchant of improv theater when we would prefer a tight script with stage directions.

First there was the Transfiguration. Jesus shining brightly on a mountain, the radiance of God’s glory emanating from Him. Peter, James, and John saw it. Then there was the demon the disciples’ couldn’t cast out and a crowd that had its doubts about Jesus. And the disciples too.

And then Jesus began to teach them about the way of the cross: The Son of Man is going to be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill him. And when he is killed, after three days he will arise. It doesn’t get much plainer and blunter than that, does it? No cryptic sayings, no puzzling parables. Simply a death and on the third day, a resurrection.

At first glance, our Gospel reading this morning would seem to be about demon possession and exorcism. It’s about a boy with a troubling demon that causes epileptic type seizures and even attempts to throw the boy into fire or water. That’s serious, scary stuff. What makes this even scarier is that the disciples weren’t able to deal with this demon on their own, but needed Jesus’ direct intervention. For some reason, the disciples seem to be lacking whatever it takes to take this sort of demon on.

“Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then shall the lame man leap like a deer, and the tongue of the mute sing for joy.” (Isaiah 35:5-6)

“He has done all things well. He even makes the deaf hear and the mute speak.” (Mark 7:37)

Jesus is doing a bit of a tour of sort, going from the coastal regions of Tyre and Sidon to the region of the ten cities, the Decapolis. He seems to be avoiding Galilee for the moment. It might have been the crowds and his spreading celebrity. Or it might have been Herod Antipas whom Jesus was trying to avoid. Whatever the reason, Jesus was moving through non-Israelite territory, Gentile country. The Messiah of Israel is also the world’s messiah, and here Jesus shows it.