SunJan292012
Scripture: MARK 1:21-28
Someone once said that the quickest way not to be invited back to a polite dinner party is to talk about exorcism! That’s probably true. Yet here we are talking about just that. And to be honest, it’s a little embarrassing, isn’t it. If you brought a friend today, you may well be groaning on the inside, wishing you could whisper to them that “this really is a cool church, one that lives in the modern world, that respects science and the latest ways of thinking. Block your ears today and I’ll bring you back next week.”
So just to reassure you: we’re not going to be talking this morning about the sort of personified devil you might see in classics like “The Exorcist” or “Amityville Horror.” Maybe such demons exist; maybe they don’t. Who’s to say for sure? What we do know, and what makes this worth exploring, though, is what we experience. And that is that there are people we know, and sometimes we ourselves, who seem to have been overtaken by something that wreaks havoc on their behavior. We don’t so much mean that there’s some being inhabiting the person, as that something unpleasant or threatening is happening, something not at all typical of the person. And because we don’t know how to explain it, we talk as if some strange force has inhabited the person. “He or she is possessed.”
“An unclean spirit” the gospel of Mark calls it (1:23). Some strange force that knocks a person off center and steals something vital. Some inexplicable toxin that leads a person down a terrible path. Sometimes we use the expression lightly. Think of the previously idyllic infant who now dictates and rages as a willful two-year-old. My mother can still remember the first time I said “No” to her as she was getting ready to put me in the bath. “No?” she thought. He can’t really be saying that! She was witnessing the beginnings of the “terrible twos,” even in delightful little old me! To her I must have seemed possessed!
Some of you may have wondered if, after 48 years without a major sports championship, Cleveland is possessed, and there may well be something to that! Examples like these proliferate: we could go on and on with often light-hearted examples of unclean spirits seeming to possess otherwise innocent souls.
But I suspect Mark’s point here is a little more serious and far-reaching than that. We don’t have to believe in some ghost-like creature inhabiting bodies to acknowledge that there are inexplicable forces working ill within and among us. You know it as well as I: the normally peaceful person who goes into an uncharacteristic rage; the brain-lock that pushes three Orange High School students to issue multiple bomb threats last fall that close the school; the compulsion that drives an otherwise happily married man into a web of prostitution; the addiction that leads your normal-looking neighbor into such heavy gambling losses that she has virtually nothing left. This is not at all to excuse our own personal responsibility in these cases: we’re the ones who have to make the right choices. It’s only to say that, in mysterious ways, there are sometimes forces in us that drive us inexplicably toward the cliff.
Sometimes possession comes in the form of illness. Particularly mental illnesses, but also physical ones, can steal a person’s core. Conditions such as bi-polar disease or paranoia can dull a person’s gifts, flatten them out, and consume them with fear. Such conditions are ways of being possessed by an unclean spirit.
And what’s true in individuals can be just as prevalent in communities. These unclean spirits can inhabit groups. One such spirit evidently overtook the office of Jimmy Dimora when he was County Commissioner. A culture of graft and commodified sex and public employment for hire seemed to overwhelm that office and its dealings. That sort of sleaze is a kind of possession.
Some possession is more subtle and, while maybe not as deeply evil, yet still a pox on our common life. I’ve been increasingly aware, over the years, of the way our elders often get demeaned in this culture. I first noticed it with my grandmother, who died some twenty years ago at 97. She was a dignified and proper woman, and when she went into a nursing facility, many of the aides would address her in this sicky, cloying way as “dear” and “sweetie.” Irritated by this sort of condescension, my uncle asked them to address her as “Mrs. Coe.”
The distinguished New Hampshire poet Donald Hall, who is now 83, spends most of his days in a chair looking out the window at his barn and the birds that come to his feeder. He feels “the circles [of his life] grow smaller. . . . Old age,” he says, “is a ceremony of losses.”
He writes with some wistfulness about how separate he feels, and about the way he’s treated in these his later years. “People’s response to our separateness can be callous, can be good-hearted, and is always condescending. When a woman writes to the newspaper, approving of something I have done, she calls me ‘a nice old gentleman.’ She intends to praise me, with ‘nice’ and ‘gentleman.’ ‘Old’ is true enough, and she lets us know that I am not a grumpy old fart, but ‘nice’ and ‘gentleman’ put me in a box where she can rub my head and hear me purr. . . . At a family dinner, . . . a grandchild’s college roommate, encountered for the first time, pulls a chair to sit with her back directly in front of me, cutting me off from the family circle: I don’t exist.
. . . Sometimes, the reaction to antiquity becomes farce. I go to Washington to receive the national Medal of Arts, and arrive two days early to look at paintings. At the National Gallery of Art, [my companion] Linda pushes me in a wheelchair from painting to painting. We stop by a Henry Moore carving. A museum guard, a man in his sixties, approaches us and helpfully tells us the name of the sculptor. . . A couple of hours later, we emerge from the cafeteria and see the same man, who asks Linda if she enjoyed her lunch. Then he bends over to address me, wags his finger, smiles a grotesque smile, and raises his voice to ask, ‘Did we have a nice din-din?’” (The New Yorker, Jan. 23, 2012, pp. 40-43).
Talk about robbing someone of their dignity! How easily we talk too loudly, and assume too little in the way of intelligence and sensitivity, and infantilize people who are old. This is not everyone’s experience, of course, but I hear it often enough that it seems a prevalent problem. A kind of unclean spirit worms its way in and treats people in a way not worthy of their seniority and wisdom of years.
And into all these scenes of possession and unclean spirits, Jesus walks. Jesus tells that long-ago false spirit to come out, and out the spirit comes. We know that doesn’t always happen to us. Many of the spirits that haunt us are virtually intractable: mental illness and social cruelty and generational insensitivity don’t just vanish with the wave of a wand.
But it’s no accident in this story that the place into which Jesus walks is the synagogue. The place he meets that unclean spirit is the place of worship, the place where God is central. It is as if to say, ‘wherever the demon is, there is a holy presence that is stronger. Wherever unclean spirits are, Jesus is also there. And Jesus is going to be the ultimate winner.’
You have a spirit that traps you in a rut of gambling or alcohol? Let Jesus come in. You’re tormented by a spirit that rattles your brain and tries your soul? Let Jesus come in. You’re part of a family or workplace or community that can’t seem to do anything warmly and peacefully? Let Jesus come in. You’re wasted by a job that eats you up and spits you out, and you can’t see any way off the treadmill? Let Jesus come in.
As important as medicine is, as necessary as various techniques for healing may be, as crucial as personal responsibility certainly is, the declaration of faith is that no matter what eats away at us, and whether it gets “cured” or not, God is always there to undergird us and provide a deep peace that can get us through the possessed times. Every place is the synagogue. Every place is the place God dwells.
One of the striking features of the story in Mark’s gospel is that only Jesus sees and responds to the person with the demon. The possessed one has probably been around, in and out of the synagogue, for years, but it appears the religious authorities have simply not noticed. It’s Jesus who sees and notices. And it’s Jesus who has the decisive power.
Decisive power doesn’t mean erasing all other powers. It doesn’t mean ridding the world of all evil and illness. It simply means that, as the two compete with each other, the Spirit of God will finally be victorious over the ultimately pathetic unclean spirit. That Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit, provides the foundation on which to stand in resisting the brokenness and evil that so often stalk us.
And what’s key here is a life lived with that Holy Spirit at the center, a life of connection and respect and care. One of the things we seek here at Federated is to stand with that gracious spirit against all those unclean spirits. Because that, for us, is the surest form of exorcism. And we do that, we exorcise, at least in part, by living into the mission God gives us. We can speak warmly to everyone we meet here. We can pray for those who suffer, and for those with whom we live in friction. And we can dive into ministries that transform lives.
One of Federated’s most significant ministries is our ElderLife program. It draws people from all over the Chagrin Valley because of its vitality, its imagination, and its service. Under the direction of Lisa Braun, ElderLife offers companionship, fun, and a significant ministry of compassion and presence. One way to fight the condescension and erasure that are such a part of the lives of many older people is to join in and support and sustain a program and a ministry like that. ElderLife is filled with a Holy Spirit that counteracts the unclean spirits.
Another primary way Federated exorcises those unclean spirits is to commit with passion to outside organizations that make a difference in people’s lives. After much prayer and deliberation, our Mission and Outreach Board selected JustHope to be the recipient of this year’s Christmas Eve offering. In addition to the money that’s been raised, we hope to connect many Federated people with ministries in Chacraseca, Nicaragua—to build a building with and for women who are themselves “stitching hope,” developing their own business, and making beauty in their midst.
Poverty is one of the most tenacious unclean spirits, and it spans the globe. Sometimes it’s tempting to think we’re only called to support people nearby. I regularly hear people say, “I want to give my money and my help locally.” And there’s something wonderful about that. The tremendous outpouring of support for Chagrin Hardware last Saturday is an example of a community coming together to make a difference for a local family. What a fabulous endeavor!
What’s so easy to forget is that our neighborhood is much bigger than that. Our neighbors aren’t just the people who live around the corner and down the road. We are tied together with people the world over in this unbroken tapestry, all of us intertwined, all of us dependent on each other to survive and thrive. Federated’s connection with JustHope and the people of Chacraseca is a way of building a better world, a way of building a Chagrin Hardware in a place that really needs it, a way of being changed ourselves and receiving gifts we can’t imagine, a rich and powerful way of countering the unclean spirits that so often gnaw away at us.
The unclean spirit in Mark’s story recognizes the power of Jesus: “I know who you are, the Holy One of God” (1:24). May we, too, see that power and join it. The demons will fall. God reigns.