Demons.

Year B 2018
After Epiphany 4 – January 28^th

Holy Trinity Episcopal Church

Mark 1:21-28

1:21 They went to Capernaum; and when the sabbath came, he entered the synagogue and taught.

1:22 They were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes.

1:23 Just then there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit,

1:24 and he cried out, "What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God."

1:25 But Jesus rebuked him, saying, "Be silent, and come out of him!"

1:26 And the unclean spirit, convulsing him and crying with a loud voice, came out of him.

1:27 They were all amazed, and they kept on asking one another, "What is this? A new teaching--with authority! He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him."

1:28 At once his fame began to spread throughout the surrounding region of Galilee.

Grace to you and Peace from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ…

This stuff gets messy.  In this very short story from the gospel of Mark we hear how the world is being overthrown… and that is hard to talk about.  It is hard to talk about demons, especially in a place I don’t usually preach!  And it is difficult to talk about the deep politics of this passage that has been so whitewashed as to make us all gloss right over the difficult and oppressed lives of those in the story, starting with those fishermen who Jesus called in the few verses before that we read last week.  Those fisherman who are standing right there next to Jesus, watching this firs public act of Jesus’ power in this gospel.    

You see, fishing was not just another career in Jesus’ Palestine.  Jesus calling fishermen can tell us something about the kingdom Jesus proclaims. Dianna Butler Bass described it well on twitter this week, you didn’t know you could get Biblical study on twitter, did you?

Ancient fishing wasn't a business that would make you rich. And it sure wasn't a hobby. It was hard work with little reward and great risk -- and it was near the bottom of the social-economic structure of the Roman Empire. 6/

Not only was fishing a low-status job with poverty-level wages, but fishing was a point of political tension in Jesus' time. 7/

For generations, those kin-groups had fished on the Sea of Galilee, barely surviving. But, in 20CE, Herod decided he wanted to impress Emperor Tiberius and build a great new city -- Tiberias -- in his honor on the Sea of Galilee, thus displacing local fishing communities. 8/

And raises the taxes and fees on fishing in order to pay for the project. 9/

When Jesus is walking along the Sea of Galilee, he's not a tourist admiring the view. He's purposefully starting his ministry in the midst of an oppressed, displaced, impoverished group of people who are being victimized in a real estate development project for the super elite.10

Jesus said to them, "The Kingdom of God begins right here. Right now. Follow me." 11/

So here’s Jesus, speaking to some of the most oppressed people of his society saying, I’ve got a new plan for you.  Let’s go fish for people.  Let’s find ourselves in God’s kingdom, not Ceasar’s.  For in Rome’s kingdom we are lost, but with God, we are found, embraced, blessed and Sent.

And then what is the very next thing that happens?  Jesus goes out into the public synagogue and shows those eager disciples, along with everyone in the vicinity, just what he means by God’s kingdom.  For the spiritual evil of the world is possessing a man.  The story calls it a demon.  And the many voices of the demon or demons speak directly to Jesus, knowing Just who he is.  And Jesus throws them out.  Just as Jesus promises, just as God promises throughout the sacred story, the evil is thrown out of God’s presence, thrown out of God’s path, God’s realm… None of God’s royal subjects will be subject to That.  

So it seems important for us 21^st Century Christians to learn to name the demons of our own world.  How do the demons manifest now?  How do they possess our brothers and sisters in creation, how does evil worm its way even into our own hearts and souls? 

I understand from scripture that Jesus is about walking with the oppressed, so that may be a place to look.  We could investigate what evils have made oppression happen.     I also understand that demon possession is sometimes Hollywood horror style, but rarely.  More often, being possessed is connected to how we follow the first commandment, or fail in doing so.  More often, we can all name things that possess us, that become more important than our identity as God’s royal subjects.  What possesses you? These are things that cause us angst…

Addiction is an easy one to point to, whether that is to alcohol or another substance, addiction possesses our lives like the demon in today’s story.  Could it be the demon that Jesus cast out from the man in the synagogue was the demon of addiction?

What others do you know…? What demons do you see possessing people today?

·         Addiction

·         Substance abuse

·         Disease

·         Fears can be demonic if they possess us

o   Xenophobia

o   Fear of Death

·         Beliefs can be demonic...

o   Sexism

o   Racism

o   Bigotry

Here is the good news for today.  Jesus has power over the demons.  Jesus has cast them out.  Already.  In God’s kingdom there are no demons.  The demons cannot tolerate being in Jesus presence, for they know Just who he is, and his radiating power will pushes them out.   For what God possesses, no demon can possess.

I was recently listening to an interview of Representative John Lewis by Krista Tippet of NPR’s On Being show.  If you don’t know who John Lewis is, he was the first person across the Edmund Pettis bridge March 7, 1965 in the Selma March, knocked unconscious by an office with a billy club.  He was a leader of the civil rights movement alongside Dr. King and has now served in the House of Representatives for 30 years.  In the interview, John Lewis said something that has possessed me ever since.  He said that when they were working during the Freedom Movement for civil rights, they were not just working for civil rights.  They were working for a new world.  A world they already knew existed in God’s kingdom.  Here and Now.  Well, There and Then, and Here and Now.  God’s reign over them was their guiding force, it was all that possessed them when they faced violence from the fearful white people who couldn’t yet imagine the world they knew already existed in God’s presence. 

That’s possessed me.  How much differently I live when I am confident that my way of life, my whole being, is a product of possession by God’s dream for our world.  When I live knowing that God’s reign is sure and present in this world, and that the demons have been cast out here, and that I carry God’s kingdom with me in my very being.  That God is moving in the world and we can see it where the demons are being cast out.  We can even participate in it, by standing up, by telling others what the kingdom looks like, and what a promise it holds for us, and for Them.  Even those who resist it. 

For that was another thing that John Lewis said… when he looked into the eyes of those who did not yet understand the freedom that he stood for, And he did look in their eyes, especially those who were spitting at them or demeaning them… when he looked into their eyes, he saw and believed that they too were God’s beloved children.  No matter what possessed them at that moment, God loved them, and so living in the kingdom: we love them.  Look at anyone, including ourselves, when we are possessed by fear or superiority or caught in the system of oppression on one side of the other, we look into each other’s eyes with love. 

There was Jesus, looking at the demon, looking into the man’s eyes and seeing the demon speaking to him, looking with deep love on this child of God and in that deep and permeating love of God’s Realm/Kingdom, the demon couldn’t stay. 

Amen.