Isaiah 65: 1-9
NPMC
Psalm 22: 18-27
4 Pentecost
Galatians 3: 23-29
June 20, 2010
Luke 8: 26-39
Anita Retzlaff
Confronting Demons
Grace to you and peace from God the Father of our Lord and Saviour Jesus the
Christ. In our moment of silent prayer this morning we think of fathers. We all
have been given life by a father and our relationship with our fathers are
important recognizing that sometimes they are strained and even non-existent.
Today on Father’s Day we celebrate the strength and compassion of loving
fathers, what they mean to us, what they have meant to us and we give God
thanks. Let us pray. Lord of bountiful grace you have given us fathers and
families and friendships. We are abundantly blessed and today especially we
express our love and devotion to fathers and grandfathers and give you thanks
for them. AMEN
It is difficult to talk about evil. We know it exists in us and in our world but
we often shy away from talking about it and for good reason. There is always a
horrible danger of misunderstanding the demonic and its sources and a risk of
condemning those who are caught in the web of evil forces and need help to get
out. Our society has an appetite for the genre of movie sensationalizing the
demonic – that’s entertainment and good for a scare. However it is much more
difficult to understand the reality of evil, of unclean spirit in our world.
We tend not to talk of evil spirits in this day and age as something that is
real outside of ourselves. The devil as a separate entity that lies in wait of
the unsuspecting, that pounces on us in the moment when we have forgotten to
watch out – that concept of evil is one that many of us dismiss. And yet that is
exactly what our story from scripture today is recounting for us. Here evil is
personified, crafted as a being, that talks and negotiates and bodily moves
about inhabiting the weak and powerless: those who cannot resist its force. In
fact there is a legion of demons, many, many demons that inhabit a tormented
man. Some would call him crazy, sick, frightful and frightening. The man who had
demons finds himself face to face with Jesus. It is a showdown between the
spirit of evil and negativity and the spirit of God and the incarnation of
wholeness in the person of Jesus.
If we look upon this encounter as the spirit of unhealthy mind and being versus
the spirit of love and wholeness we can begin to put ourselves into the
escalating tension of this power struggle. There is an excerpt of a poem/prayer
written by Ted Loder that is printed in the bulletin; a prayer that we used in
our Wednesday morning prayer for peace this week. In its poetic and contemporary
way it covers the essence of the confrontation playing out in Luke’s gospel text
for today.
I refer you to the first part of this prayer:
O God of timelessness
and time,
I thank you for my time
and for those things that are yet possible
and precious in it:
daybreak and beginning again,
midnight and the touch of angels,
the taming of demons in the dance of dreams;
a word of forgiveness,
and sometimes a song,
for my breathing…my life.
Into this beautiful reflection of thanksgiving and delight the author slips a
reference to the taming of demons. So simple and slick is the reality of evil
that more often than not we skim over it and imagine that it does not exist.
Yet, we are constantly taming the demons in our lives. It is part and parcel of
what it means to be human. Are evil spirits responsible for the illness,
negativity and death-like forces around us? Are these struggles of a spiritual
nature alone?
What are the demons we tame; how is our wholeness and health compromised by
powers that overtake us? I can begin by listing some of the obvious ones:
alcohol used in excess, food in excess, pornography, gambling; these activities
can possess us in ways that curtail our freedom, cause pain and hold us hostage.
These are demons, if you will, that take away our freedom and oppress us; anger
that is uncontrollable, hostilities that do not abate, hatred of others who are
different from us and jealousy for what others have that we do not.
We can love money too much so that we become obsessed with it; having it and
needing to make always more and more. Hoarding and extreme miserliness can
overtake our lives. All of these things, food, drink, entertainment, money,
relationships can be distorted, abused or used in excess. Whenever we are pulled
into these negative cycles something else has control of us. Is it an evil
spirit? Well at times it feels like it.
In any case the story of the man living in the wilds of the Gerasene region, a
place set apart from the main activity of Jesus, is a story of evil spirits that
have taken over the life of a man, possessing him completely. He has been
overcome by a powerful and negative force, out of control, out of his mind. What
is interesting is that the man does not try to run away from Jesus. In fact
Luke’s account says that, “the man who had demons met him.” He falls down in
front of Jesus but does not try to escape. Out of the wilds and isolation come
the powers of evil and negative spirit. They are driven to submission at the
feet of Jesus, the power of love.
Back to our poem and “the taming of demons in the dance of dreams, a word of
forgiveness and sometimes a song, for my breathing…my life.” Something is about
to happen in the meeting of the powers; the Holy Spirit face to face with the
evil spirits. In our lives too, as we have the courage to face the things that
threaten to undo us something is about to happen. The demons recognize
immediately who Jesus is and the power that he has. The one possessed shouts
out, identifies Jesus and begs to be left alone.
The forces of oppression too are finally identified, the evil that lurks in the
wilds and in the dark – that is most often where we hide our obsessions – is
brought to speech and to light. Jesus asks the man’s name and he gives it:
“’Legion’, for the many demons that entered him.” The forces of oppression are
named and in this case there is likely a double meaning. Legion is also a
reference to the Roman military, the negative forces that oppress Israel. A
legion consisted of approximately 6000 troops with an equal number of auxiliary
troops. In other words, the man is possessed by an overabundance of evil, a
legion of demons and that is about to be addressed.
Jesus addresses the demons. His is the power that overcomes the dark side. He
permits the legion of spirits inhabiting the wild man to leave him and enter the
herd of pigs. The Holy Spirit is by far more powerful and effective than the
spirit of evil and the bringers of ill health. The forces of evil lack ultimate
power and are put in their place. In the face of Jesus’ love evil runs over the
cliff and returns to the abyss. That is vital for all of us to remember as we
confront the demons that hold sway over us. Love is the power to reckon with.
Why is it then that we tend to give evil so much control, to frighten us so? We
often live as though the forces of death are stronger than the spirit of life.
Two weeks ago I walked through what remains of the concentration camp at
Buchenwald in the former East Germany and I did wonder about the mighty power of
evil. The camp is located on a green and grassy height that overlooks a verdant
valley in the distance. The setting is stunningly beautiful; the horror that
once reigned within those walls is indescribable and that is often what we say
of evil. It is unspeakable, unfathomable and unbelievable. However, in spite of
all of the negative evidence that the memory of something like a concentration
camp provokes we confess that evil does not have the last word.
We never confess faith in the devil; we renounce evil and confess faith in Jesus
Christ. If we succumb to the power of evil and believe that it has more power
than that which is good, we have lost our freedom. Many of us upon our baptism
responded to these words, “Do you, in the presence of God and this assembly,
solemnly renounce the Devil and all his works and declare the Lord to be your
God?” (Minister’s Manual, p. 51) We do not give testimony to the power of evil,
though it is real and present but we give ultimate allegiance and testimony to
love, to the power of the Holy Spirit. However and whatever we believe about
evil, the devil and demons they do not have ultimate power in our world of the
gospel.
For as our poem reminds us, “…there is a word of forgiveness and sometimes a
song, for my breathing… for my life.” The poem concludes, “Thank you for the
sharp senses of the timeless stirring in my time, and your praise in my heart;
for the undeniable awareness, quick as now, that the need of you is the truth of
me, and your presence with me is the truth of you, which sets me free for
others, for joy, and for you; for your grace…my life…forever.”
The man, once possessed and oppressed is now free because Jesus gives the word.
The spirit of love has the ultimate power and the final word. So too for us!
Undeniably we face demons in our lives, real or spiritual. The struggle is not
an illusion but neither is the love of God. From that source we gain strength to
face our demons, to find help when we need it, to seek the face of Jesus when we
feel plagued and encumbered. We always have a choice; the power of love over the
power of death.
When we can say to God, “the need of you is the truth of me and your presence
with me is the truth of you” - when this is our prayer and we know deep within
us that we are made for God’s love and God awaits ours, we are free – for
others, for joy and for God. Let it be so. AMEN