[Sermon delivered at St. Mary the Virgin Episcopal Church, Phoenix, Arizona on the Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany (Septuagesima Sunday, January 28, 2024.]
✠ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, the Trinity, one in Essence and Undivided. Amen.
Today, much to the distress of the Twenty-First Century rationalist, the Gospel talks about Jesus driving out more demons. Again. For many, this is proof positive that the Scriptures are no more than the superstitious ramblings of an unenlightened generation. To others, we take this as an understanding that Jesus’ healing extended even toward mental illnesses that challenge the best psychiatrists and psychologists among us today.
This modern hubris is going to be our downfall. Certainly, some of our learning over the past few centuries have proven older beliefs invalid. We have learned the Earth is not flat, that some disease is not due to bad air (though some conditions like COPD can be brought about by poor air quality or other airborne inorganic substances) or by imbalances in bodily humours (though some illnesses are due to chemical imbalances brought on by other causes and adjustable by medication), and that madness is not necessarily the fault of evil spirits (more on that later). Still, did the ancients possessed a wisdom that we should not ignore?
Lately there have been quite a bit written by theologians about modernism and the harm wrought by the absolute rejection of the metaphysical by modern materialists.[1] Now, I would hazard a guess that those of us here today may well reject the notion that the metaphysical is nonsense. We believe that the material is only a part of reality, that there is an immaterial side of reality, but we still have trouble with the idea that there are immaterial intelligences out there that perhaps do not bear either God or us any good-will whatsoever.
I would ask the question then, why, if we believe that the metaphysical exists beside the physical, and that we know that good and evil manifest in the physical and within the hearts of people the world over, then why do we struggle with the concept that there are immaterial agents of evil alongside those of good? We know people can, and often do, behave wickedly. I we also believe that there are immaterial spirits who serve God and are agents for good, which we call angels, why should we be surprised that there could be ones that do not serve God and are agents of evil, whatever we call them?
In today’s Gospel,[2] Our Lord is confronted by a man clearly presented by the Evangelist Mark as possessed by evil spirits. Mark is clear that this isn’t a case of a delusion on part of the speaker, expressing an irrational fear that Jesus was there for his destruction, but an indwelling intelligence not part of the created being it inhabited. It sees Jesus and immediately is overcome with fear and starts to babble. Our Lord has little patience; ancient commentators express opinions that He did not wish to be revealed yet, or that He did not wish for the testimony of demons,[3] but I counter that He simply had no patience for them and would not tolerate their presence. The Incarnate God who decried hypocrisy among the religious authorities, who would drive the money changers out of the Temple, would certainly have zero time for demons whose only goal was the destruction of humanity. So with a simple sentence, He told them to go, and in abject terror they went.
At this point some of us may feel some unease about this reality. Conjuring up visions of Hollywood blockbusters or transcripts of obscure cases kept out of the spotlight by Church authorities, the thought that immaterial physical beings out to get us may well impinge on our abilities to sleep well at night.
I’m going to let you in on a little secret. In the long run, demons do not matter. Certainly, they can do great harm, but in the long run they do not matter. Certainly they can greatly complicate our lives and spread mayhem and confusion, but in the end they do not matter.
How can I tell you these things exist and then say in the next breath they do not matter? Look at today’s Gospel. If what I say is true, then just seeing Our Lord fills these beings with dread. The one we read about today cries out, “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us?”[4] Not only was it distressed, it had a real fear that Our Lord would destroy it on the spot; it had no doubt that Jesus could do so and not break a sweat. As it was, Our Lord simply turned to the afflicted man, told the demon to get lost, and the spirit ran for its very life. The Gospels are full of these incidents, such as the Gerasene demoniac whose legion of spirits were just as easily dispatched, the boy who had a spirit that induced convulsions which Jesus drove out with a word, or St. Mary Magdalene from whom Our Lord drove seven demons. That Jesus could deliver people from this with a simple word or phrase is a thing of wonder. And what is even more remarkable is that His disciples and followers to this day are able to do so, in His Most Holy Name.
When Our Lord read from Isaiah at the synagogue in His hometown of Nazareth, part of the passage He read stated, “He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives…to let the oppressed go free.”[5] People thought the Messiah was to deliver them from the Romans, but He had come among us to deliver us from something much more terrible and longer lasting, and that was Sin and Death. His ministry showed ample evidence of this. He healed people from physical and mental ailments. He raised people from the dead. He forgave people their sins. Finally, He was crucified, and died, and rose again from the dead, not as undead but as fully restored Humanity, eternally reconciled with the Father. He ascended into Heaven with the promise to come again at the end of the Age to effect the consummation of this deliverance from Sin and Death. And he had complete authority over the spirits that had thrown their lot in with Sin and Death.
Sin and Death, Evil and Wickedness are simply nulls, absences of Good and Life, the result of separation from the Source of Goodness, Light, and Life. In their arrogance, certain spiritual beings turned from God, confident in their own power, failing to realize that this power was on loan to them. In their rejection of God, they turned against everything created by God, and did everything they could to destroy it. How much were they involved in bringing us, a species both physical and metaphysical, into the same boat is a matter of conjecture, parables of a serpent and a piece of bad fruit notwithstanding. The important thing to remember is that God turned these efforts on their ear, He took flesh and dwelt among us, taking our nature, redeeming it upon the cross, and restoring it by rising from the dead, delivering us from Sin and Death. These spirits who have sundered themselves from God found themselves powerless to prevent that. The only power they have is when they can convince us that God does not have that power, that we are irredeemable. Yet when confronted with the Living God, even in the form of a mortal man, their power dissolves into fear and impotent trembling.
That said, I would not recommend seeking them out and going toe to toe with them. We are simple created beings like them, and they are older, more experienced, and are way more nasty than we could ever be. I will say that it is in the Lord Jesus Christ that we have our deliverance from them. God does not want us to be influenced by them. God does not want us to pay attention to them. God wants us to turn our attention upon Him, the very one Whom they cannot withstand, the one Who will not abide illness, madness, chaos, nor destruction. Will they continue to cause trouble? Certainly, just as the corrupted cosmos will continue to have trouble and spiral into chaos, but we have the promise that Our Lord has overcome this, that He will at the end of the Age make everything new, that there will be no more Sin and Death, Evil and Corruption. The old things will have passed away, and in Him everything will become new, and the gates of Hell cannot prevail against that.
✠ Through the prayers of the Most Holy Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary, Holy Dominic, and all the saints, Saviour save us. Amen.
[1] This past August I was privileged at the General Chapter of the Anglican Order of Preachers to hear a lecture on the topic by Br. Jason Carroll, OP, of Lethbridge, Alberta.
[2] Mk. 1.21-28
[3] For example, St. Athanasius in a letter to local bishops (To the Bishops of Egypt, 1.3), and St. Ambrose in a letter to his sister (Letters, 22).
[4] Mk. 1.24
[5] Lk. 4.18b
Comments