January 29, 2012: 4th Sunday after Epiphany
Mark 1:21-28
Preacher:
Pastor Carrie B. Smith
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
The Oscar nominees for Best Picture were announced last week, and it came as no surprise to anyone that The Devil Inside wasn’t included on the list. In fact, the only award this little horror flick has earned is having achieved the second largest drop in popularity in the week after its debut. It dropped 76.2% in one week, second only to the demise of Jonas Brothers: the 3-D Concert Experience. The Hollywood Reporter said “The Devil Inside proves as scary and unsettling as a slab of devil's food cake - only considerably less satisfying”; and Slate magazine declared it to include “the worst movie ending of all time.”
The Devil Inside is just the latest of many movies dealing with a favorite cinematic topic: demon possession. Ask anyone on the street what possession and exorcism look like, and they’re likely to cite the 1973 film The Exorcist. This is where we get the idea that demons speak in tongues, holy water burns the skin, and heads can spin completely around. At least The Exorcist was a well-made movie—the stream of exorcism movies that followed can best be described as appealing only to our fears and our appetite for exploring the power of evil in the world.
These movie images have become such a part of our culture that we hardly know what to do when we encounter Bible texts like Mark 1:21-28. When we hear the words “Just then, a man with an unclean spirit was in the synagogue, and he called out in a loud voice, ‘What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth?’”; when we hear Jesus rebuke that spirit saying, “Be silent! And come out of him!”; when we learn that the unclean spirit makes the man convulse on the ground as it vacates his body—suddenly the Gospels are transported to the realm of cinema. The man with the unclean spirit becomes Linda Blair, and Jesus becomes the exorcist with his bag of holy water, crosses, and special prayer books.
As interesting as this mental movie experience might be, the problem is now this biblical account is so easy to dismiss. Because our minds are filled with Hollywood demons and pseudo-religious exorcisms, this powerful story of Jesus asserting his authority over an unclean spirit becomes just another unbelievable script, good only as a plot for a B-movie, and perhaps a spot on the Rotten Tomatoes list of Worst Movies Ever.
Demons, possessions, and unclean spirits seem very far from our everyday lives. And yet—chances are everyone in this room knows someone possessed by an addiction to alcohol, drugs, or gambling. Chances are you know someone whose inability to forgive has completely taken them over to the dark side. Perhaps you even have personal experience with being possessed by an unclean spirit of negativity, or judgment, or despair. These are not Hollywood scripts. These are everyday, true stories of powers and principalities claiming to have authority over us. Whether it’s alcohol or food, depression or grief, mental illness or fear—any spirit that takes hold of our lives and claims to have more authority than God is a demon. Demons make us say and do things that aren’t true to who God created us to be. And demons deserve to be cast out.
Now in the movie version of a typical exorcism, the priest comes carrying his bag of tricks and special prayers, desperate to rid the poor possessed soul of the unclean spirit. Often, in the end, there’s some kind of proposition that must occur:
If the exorcist believes in evil, then he can believe in God, and can cast out the spirit.
If the possessed person says the right prayers, then the spirit will leave.
If the other people in the room confess their sins, then the spirit loses its power.
But in Mark chapter 1, Jesus enters the scene, and he requires no such bag of tricks or propositional theology. There’s no mention of the other people in the synagogue saying prayers for him or participating at all. And the man with the unclean spirit? He didn’t have to do anything but stand there and be unclean! There was no show of special courage, no confession of sins, no sign that he was a particularly faithful person. There he was, in the synagogue, face to face with Jesus, and he just let it all hang out—crying out in a loud voice, mocking Jesus, and even stating “I know who you are!”
But Jesus, speaking with authority, said simply: “Be silent.” The Message Version of the Gospels puts it this way: Jesus shut him up: "Quiet! Get out of him!"
And that unclean spirit, pitching a fit and causing a scene, left the man’s body. The spirit left his body because Jesus spoke with the authority given to him through God the Father. The spirit was exorcised, cast out, and sent back to the devil because, as Bishop Desmond Tutu once proclaimed: “Goodness is stronger than evil, love is stronger than hate, light is stronger than darkness, and life is stronger than death.” Jesus of Nazareth, son of God, crucified and risen, speaks with authority over every power and principality, and even over sin and death! Amen!
Though our lives may not resemble a Hollywood horror flick, we love these movies because the so-called demonic powers and unclean spirits that appear in them are recognizable to us. We are hungry for a cure for the spirits that plague us. We need healing as badly as the unclean man in the synagogue. All we need is for Jesus to enter the scene.
And the Good News is—he always does! It’s just that Jesus rarely looks like a movie exorcist. In fact, he may not be recognizable to us at all. Sometimes, in the midst of our possession or in the throes of our despair, Jesus enters the scene unexpectedly through a doctor, or a friend, or even a stranger on the street.
In the case of my friend Sean, Jesus entered the scene in the voice of his ex-wife.
Sean was a high school classmate of mine. He found his calling early on as a disc jockey for a local radio station. He is funny and smart, well-known in the area for his good humor and big personality. What most people didn’t know was that Sean had struggled his whole life with food addiction and morbid obesity. From the safety of the radio station studio, where no one could see his downward spiral, he gained more and more weight. In 2008, he weighed 505 pounds.
And it was then that his wife came to him and said, “I’m done watching you kill yourself. I love you, I do, but I can’t stand by and witness your slow suicide any longer. I want a divorce."
Now this may not sound like the voice of Jesus, but it was. This was the voice of the Holy One of God—the God who created Sean and loved him—speaking truth and demanding that the unclean spirit be cast out. Sean tells me that this moment (along with a “come to Jesus” talk with his employer”) is what set him on the path to where he is today.
Today, Sean has lost over 270 pounds. He did it without surgery or fad diets. He did it slowly, blogging about it every day, chronicling with painful honesty the process of becoming a new, healthy, man. He learned a new way of eating. He exercised. He faced long-held beliefs and fears. These are things which seemed impossible before—but once that unclean spirit was named, rebuked, and cast out, he was free to start on a new path, a path he calls “The Transformation Road”. In fact, Sean just celebrated the publication of a book with the same name: “Transformation Road: My Journey to 500 Pounds and Back.”
Jesus entered the scene and made Sean’s transformation possible. But let me be clear: the unclean spirit that was cast out of Sean was not morbid obesity. He wasn’t possessed by fat, and Jesus didn’t take the pounds off for him! Sean did that, through hard work and perseverance—but only after he was cleansed of the lying spirit which had whispered to him for years: “You’re not worth it.” “You can’t do it.” “You are nothing.” “You are not lovable.”
This is an unclean spirit many of us can recognize. It’s a demon that enters our lives in various ways—through an abusive household, a violent relationship, a racist community, or unjust systems of oppression. It’s a spirit that holds us back, keeps us down, gives us excuses and stops us from experiencing joy. This is a demon, and demons deserve to be cast out.
But thanks be to God for Jesus of Nazareth, son of God, who always shows up! Thanks be to God for the ways in which Jesus’ life, death and resurrection speak truth to power and cast out demons from our lives. Thanks be to God for Jesus, the holy one of God, in whom we find healing, wholeness, and a perfect love which casts out fear. In spite of our demons—and perhaps because of them—Jesus always enters the scene and helps to re-write the scripts of our lives. God is good! Amen.
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