Deuteronomy 18:15-20
Psalm 111
1 Corinthians 8:1-13
Mark 1:21-28
In the beginning of Chapter 18 of Deuteronomy, which deals with God’s establishment of religious leaders for the people, Moses announces that God forbade his people to practice human sacrifice or magic or to seek augurs from spirits or ghosts. God goes so far as to say that these practices are detestable to him, and are his reason for driving out the people of Canaan in order to give the land to his people.
It seems obvious that God abhors murder, but what might be the reason that our loving God would find these other practices so awful? At least within the cosmic world of the Old Testament, it appears God is not denying the existence of such spirits, though he says really nothing more about them.
In the context of the chapter, it seems that God wants to distinguish between priests, who see to the ritual worship of God, a role common to the many gods of that time, prophets, who act as the interpreters of the law in evolving situations in the tradition of Moses himself, over against the magicians and sorcerers of other nations.
In contrast to seeking augurs from spirits, God demands his prophets to speak what he commands them to speak, and nothing else. And he makes a grave promise to those who prophecy in the name of another god, or who lie about what God has said. That prophet, God says, shall die.
As for his people, they are charged with doing as the prophet tells them, but if they don’t, it is not left to humans to mete out consequences. “I myself” God says, “will hold accountable.”
I read our passage from Paul’s many times this week, and it seems to me that he contradicts himself. In one breath he reminds the Corinthians that there’s no such thing as other gods or spirits, but in the next breath, he says “we all know there are many gods and lords.” Though in the end he seems to suggest that it doesn’t matter to one’s salvation whether one eats meat sacrificed to idols or one doesn’t.
This is strange in light of the Jerusalem Council in Acts, in which one of the few things the church decides Gentiles must do to be Christians is to refrain from eating meat sacrificed to idols. It seems strange to me that in AD 60 or so, Paul seems to be saying eating meat sacrificed to idols doesn’t matter, and twenty or thirty years later, Luke is saying that refraining is kind of an absolute for Gentile Christians.
Of course, none of this matters to us, except inasmuch as we might consider the question of demons and spirits this morning.
Mark reports the first miraculous act of Jesus is to successfully command a demon to let go of a man in a synagogue.
Jesus had gathered four of his twelve disciples, and they had accompanied him that morning. I should mention there’s good reason to believe that Mark really was Mark, the amanuensis of Peter. An amanuensis is a literate scribe who takes dictation from the illiterate on their behalf, and are particularly known for adding their own rhetorical flourishes on their client’s behalf. I say this because Mark may be the only gospel written by a person who actually heard the story from an apostle. It is probably the reason that all the gospels, who take Mark as their base, center Peter in the story. The core of the gospel story, it would seem, was told by Peter.
And so this is something Peter witnessed in Capernaum, the very first time Jesus preached. Presumably, Jesus announced his news: the kingdom of God was at hand. Mark tells us that the congregation was astounded by Jesus, because he taught with authority and not as the scribes. I take this to mean that he wasn’t interpreting scripture as much as embodying it.
And there is a demonic reaction that emerges from within the congregation. Remember that Jesus very recently had spent forty days in the wilderness a la John the Baptist, and there confronted the devil and successfully resisted him. Mark’s story, and really all the gospel stories, are about a dire conflict between God and the devil. The devil has been dissed, and he’s made it his mission to destroy Jesus, as Jesus well knows.
It is striking that this unnamed man in this presumably upright urban congregation is possessed by a demon. It seems unlikely that a man known to be infected with an unclean spirit would have been admitted to synagogue worship. The demon must not have yet made itself known. It may have been controlling the man all along but was just waiting for the opportunity to cause fear and confusion.
What was this poor man’s experience? As people of the time understood it, the spirit took control of the man’s body, and locked his soul and mind up deep inside himself. The man would have felt his mouth open and would have heard the words coming out of him, but he would have no more control over them than he would over some other person’s body.
The demon cries out “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth?” Nazareth was in Galilee, and was apparently regarded as something of a cesspool of humanity. Typical of demons, it stirs the pot.
It goes on to say, “Have you come to destroy us?” A lot of interpreters assume the demon is fearful for itself, but I think the demon is still pretending to be the guy he’s inhabiting. Jesus is preaching that kingdom of God has come near and is calling for repentance. While this is indeed good news, it also has a dark side in the upheaval and horror of the dissolving of the old and the birth of the new. By associating them with a revolutionary movement, Jesus might bring the Romans down on them.
“I know who you are,” the demon goes on to say, “the Holy One of God.” The demon is outing Jesus before Jesus is ready to be outed. Jesus will ultimately show that to be the Messiah means something very different from what all those congregants in Capernaum were thinking it meant.
And so Jesus eternly orders the demon to shut up, and then to leave the man, who cries out and goes into convulsions, until the demon leaves him in his right mind.
Are there really personal evil spirits that influence or possess human beings? Some think so, and if they are knowledgeable about the demonic as it is portrayed in scripture, they know that demons began as angelic persecutors of the wicked, God’s justice system, but then some of the inter-testamental literature tells of a break between God and Satan, who took his demons and turned against God, falling from heaven into hell.
These demons then worked to tempt humans into sin, and to mete out the consequences thereof. They find their way into our inner darkness, usually by our unwitting invitation, and there they hide, biding their time until they can use their host to cause confusion and turmoil and destruction.
I am not one to deny that there are mysteries in the universe we may not yet have apprehended with science, but I suspect biblical demonology is more useful as an image to describe all-too-human dynamics.
When we are frightened or outright attacked, our bodies shut down our higher minds and pump us full of adrenaline, preparing us to do whatever we must do to survive, either to fight or to flee. Our moral principles go out the window. We revert to our animal selves, and become capable of terrible things. We give up control of ourselves to something deeper and more primal. We found ourselves doing and saying things that are not natural to us, as if some great power had taken control of our bodies. In the aftermath of such an experience, we may find we can’t even remember what happened.
And a great power it is, a survival mechanism that worked very well for the hundreds of thousands of years humans lived more-or-less in the wild. And it is powerful enough to be contagious. Humans are social creatures, deeply sensitive to the emotions of the people around us. Our desire to belong, another deep and largely uncontrollable impulse, can cause us to invite in the unclean spirits of those around us, so that we can join them in their destructive intentions. This is when the demonic blooms on a social or political or economic level.
So whether we believe in personal evil spirits, or whether we recognize the usefulness of the image of the demonic, the good news is that Christ has been given authority over such spirits, and in following him, we can be freed from their tyranny.
There’s a saying one hears in the rooms of the Twelve Step Fellowships, a summary of the whole program of recovery: “I can’t. He can. Let him.”
We imagine that we have control over ourselves, but we have certain instincts, certain buttons that can be pushed, that can turn us into something we’re not, no matter who we think we are. We think our willpower or our character or our good intentions will save us, but there are some kinds of stimulus against which we are largely powerless.
The world constantly comes at us now. It’s in our pockets, it’s in our living rooms, our bedrooms, our most intimate spaces. And the people behind the controls have learned where our buttons are, ironically because we freely told them. And they are happy to push those buttons because they end up spitting out profit for them.
There’s a bit of email that’s been discovered that the founder of Facebook sent when he’d just invented it. He bragged that he had all this personal information on so many people at the university he attended. Someone asked how. His answer “Because they trust me. Dumb idiots.” He didn’t say idiots. He said a word I won’t repeat in church. Facebook was later found to have run a secret, illegal experiment to see if it could use its information to actually change people’s opinions and behavior, something the people Facebook and Google and all the rest sell your information to are very happy to do.
How do we resist? We can’t really, not if we want to be even slightly connected to the world at large. We are more-or-less powerless.
But God is not powerless, as Jesus demonstrated in that synagogue in Capernaum. The good news is that the realm of God has indeed come near to us. His power is available to us through Jesus Christ. Our need of that power, I would say, is urgent, for in following him, God’s power does for us what we can’t do for ourselves. His light gives us the strength and the hope and the will to resist the temptation to give into the evil spirits that circulate all around us.
This is partly our work as a church community. We have perfected an atmosphere of welcome and acceptance here, a wonderful Spirit-led achievement. We now are embarking on a deepening phase. Welcome deepens into mutual knowledge and care and support and encouragement. We, the children of God, the children of light, have been called out of the world so beset by evil spirits, to be the new exorcists, the peacemakers, the reconcilers, the prophets of love. We need each other in our corners as we take on the powers of hatred and grievance and violence that beset our society.
But above all, we need that vital relationship with God that Jesus Christ has given us.
We can’t. He can. Let him.
Amen.
Psalm 111
1 Corinthians 8:1-13
Mark 1:21-28
In the beginning of Chapter 18 of Deuteronomy, which deals with God’s establishment of religious leaders for the people, Moses announces that God forbade his people to practice human sacrifice or magic or to seek augurs from spirits or ghosts. God goes so far as to say that these practices are detestable to him, and are his reason for driving out the people of Canaan in order to give the land to his people.
It seems obvious that God abhors murder, but what might be the reason that our loving God would find these other practices so awful? At least within the cosmic world of the Old Testament, it appears God is not denying the existence of such spirits, though he says really nothing more about them.
In the context of the chapter, it seems that God wants to distinguish between priests, who see to the ritual worship of God, a role common to the many gods of that time, prophets, who act as the interpreters of the law in evolving situations in the tradition of Moses himself, over against the magicians and sorcerers of other nations.
In contrast to seeking augurs from spirits, God demands his prophets to speak what he commands them to speak, and nothing else. And he makes a grave promise to those who prophecy in the name of another god, or who lie about what God has said. That prophet, God says, shall die.
As for his people, they are charged with doing as the prophet tells them, but if they don’t, it is not left to humans to mete out consequences. “I myself” God says, “will hold accountable.”
I read our passage from Paul’s many times this week, and it seems to me that he contradicts himself. In one breath he reminds the Corinthians that there’s no such thing as other gods or spirits, but in the next breath, he says “we all know there are many gods and lords.” Though in the end he seems to suggest that it doesn’t matter to one’s salvation whether one eats meat sacrificed to idols or one doesn’t.
This is strange in light of the Jerusalem Council in Acts, in which one of the few things the church decides Gentiles must do to be Christians is to refrain from eating meat sacrificed to idols. It seems strange to me that in AD 60 or so, Paul seems to be saying eating meat sacrificed to idols doesn’t matter, and twenty or thirty years later, Luke is saying that refraining is kind of an absolute for Gentile Christians.
Of course, none of this matters to us, except inasmuch as we might consider the question of demons and spirits this morning.
Mark reports the first miraculous act of Jesus is to successfully command a demon to let go of a man in a synagogue.
Jesus had gathered four of his twelve disciples, and they had accompanied him that morning. I should mention there’s good reason to believe that Mark really was Mark, the amanuensis of Peter. An amanuensis is a literate scribe who takes dictation from the illiterate on their behalf, and are particularly known for adding their own rhetorical flourishes on their client’s behalf. I say this because Mark may be the only gospel written by a person who actually heard the story from an apostle. It is probably the reason that all the gospels, who take Mark as their base, center Peter in the story. The core of the gospel story, it would seem, was told by Peter.
And so this is something Peter witnessed in Capernaum, the very first time Jesus preached. Presumably, Jesus announced his news: the kingdom of God was at hand. Mark tells us that the congregation was astounded by Jesus, because he taught with authority and not as the scribes. I take this to mean that he wasn’t interpreting scripture as much as embodying it.
And there is a demonic reaction that emerges from within the congregation. Remember that Jesus very recently had spent forty days in the wilderness a la John the Baptist, and there confronted the devil and successfully resisted him. Mark’s story, and really all the gospel stories, are about a dire conflict between God and the devil. The devil has been dissed, and he’s made it his mission to destroy Jesus, as Jesus well knows.
It is striking that this unnamed man in this presumably upright urban congregation is possessed by a demon. It seems unlikely that a man known to be infected with an unclean spirit would have been admitted to synagogue worship. The demon must not have yet made itself known. It may have been controlling the man all along but was just waiting for the opportunity to cause fear and confusion.
What was this poor man’s experience? As people of the time understood it, the spirit took control of the man’s body, and locked his soul and mind up deep inside himself. The man would have felt his mouth open and would have heard the words coming out of him, but he would have no more control over them than he would over some other person’s body.
The demon cries out “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth?” Nazareth was in Galilee, and was apparently regarded as something of a cesspool of humanity. Typical of demons, it stirs the pot.
It goes on to say, “Have you come to destroy us?” A lot of interpreters assume the demon is fearful for itself, but I think the demon is still pretending to be the guy he’s inhabiting. Jesus is preaching that kingdom of God has come near and is calling for repentance. While this is indeed good news, it also has a dark side in the upheaval and horror of the dissolving of the old and the birth of the new. By associating them with a revolutionary movement, Jesus might bring the Romans down on them.
“I know who you are,” the demon goes on to say, “the Holy One of God.” The demon is outing Jesus before Jesus is ready to be outed. Jesus will ultimately show that to be the Messiah means something very different from what all those congregants in Capernaum were thinking it meant.
And so Jesus eternly orders the demon to shut up, and then to leave the man, who cries out and goes into convulsions, until the demon leaves him in his right mind.
Are there really personal evil spirits that influence or possess human beings? Some think so, and if they are knowledgeable about the demonic as it is portrayed in scripture, they know that demons began as angelic persecutors of the wicked, God’s justice system, but then some of the inter-testamental literature tells of a break between God and Satan, who took his demons and turned against God, falling from heaven into hell.
These demons then worked to tempt humans into sin, and to mete out the consequences thereof. They find their way into our inner darkness, usually by our unwitting invitation, and there they hide, biding their time until they can use their host to cause confusion and turmoil and destruction.
I am not one to deny that there are mysteries in the universe we may not yet have apprehended with science, but I suspect biblical demonology is more useful as an image to describe all-too-human dynamics.
When we are frightened or outright attacked, our bodies shut down our higher minds and pump us full of adrenaline, preparing us to do whatever we must do to survive, either to fight or to flee. Our moral principles go out the window. We revert to our animal selves, and become capable of terrible things. We give up control of ourselves to something deeper and more primal. We found ourselves doing and saying things that are not natural to us, as if some great power had taken control of our bodies. In the aftermath of such an experience, we may find we can’t even remember what happened.
And a great power it is, a survival mechanism that worked very well for the hundreds of thousands of years humans lived more-or-less in the wild. And it is powerful enough to be contagious. Humans are social creatures, deeply sensitive to the emotions of the people around us. Our desire to belong, another deep and largely uncontrollable impulse, can cause us to invite in the unclean spirits of those around us, so that we can join them in their destructive intentions. This is when the demonic blooms on a social or political or economic level.
So whether we believe in personal evil spirits, or whether we recognize the usefulness of the image of the demonic, the good news is that Christ has been given authority over such spirits, and in following him, we can be freed from their tyranny.
There’s a saying one hears in the rooms of the Twelve Step Fellowships, a summary of the whole program of recovery: “I can’t. He can. Let him.”
We imagine that we have control over ourselves, but we have certain instincts, certain buttons that can be pushed, that can turn us into something we’re not, no matter who we think we are. We think our willpower or our character or our good intentions will save us, but there are some kinds of stimulus against which we are largely powerless.
The world constantly comes at us now. It’s in our pockets, it’s in our living rooms, our bedrooms, our most intimate spaces. And the people behind the controls have learned where our buttons are, ironically because we freely told them. And they are happy to push those buttons because they end up spitting out profit for them.
There’s a bit of email that’s been discovered that the founder of Facebook sent when he’d just invented it. He bragged that he had all this personal information on so many people at the university he attended. Someone asked how. His answer “Because they trust me. Dumb idiots.” He didn’t say idiots. He said a word I won’t repeat in church. Facebook was later found to have run a secret, illegal experiment to see if it could use its information to actually change people’s opinions and behavior, something the people Facebook and Google and all the rest sell your information to are very happy to do.
How do we resist? We can’t really, not if we want to be even slightly connected to the world at large. We are more-or-less powerless.
But God is not powerless, as Jesus demonstrated in that synagogue in Capernaum. The good news is that the realm of God has indeed come near to us. His power is available to us through Jesus Christ. Our need of that power, I would say, is urgent, for in following him, God’s power does for us what we can’t do for ourselves. His light gives us the strength and the hope and the will to resist the temptation to give into the evil spirits that circulate all around us.
This is partly our work as a church community. We have perfected an atmosphere of welcome and acceptance here, a wonderful Spirit-led achievement. We now are embarking on a deepening phase. Welcome deepens into mutual knowledge and care and support and encouragement. We, the children of God, the children of light, have been called out of the world so beset by evil spirits, to be the new exorcists, the peacemakers, the reconcilers, the prophets of love. We need each other in our corners as we take on the powers of hatred and grievance and violence that beset our society.
But above all, we need that vital relationship with God that Jesus Christ has given us.
We can’t. He can. Let him.
Amen.
