CASTING OUT DEMONS
Rev. Dr. Joyce Antila Phipps
Old First Church, Middletown, NJ
February 7, 2021
Texts: Deuteronomy 32:1–18; Mark 1:29–39
Perhaps one of the more recent powerful images of casting out a demon was the one in the film The Exorcist, when the old priest played by Max Von Sydow of Seventh Seal fame, casts out the demon which has taken over the body of a young girl played by Linda Blair. That scene featured at least one 360 degrees turn of the head and Von Sydow being thrown across the room by the power of the demon leaving the child's body. This is certainly different from the kind of image we have when we read of Jesus casting demons out of people.
Although there is no exact equivalent of the word “demon” in Hebrew Scripture, the idea of evil spirits totally disembodied and having power over people seems to have been generally accepted by the time of Jesus. Early Christian writers used the term demons to refer to pagan deities, fallen angels, and spirits inhabiting people who would probably be diagnosed as schizophrenic in today's world. The early church Fathers often referred to the apocryphal Book of Enoch, most of which was written around 200 BCE and some of which was added in Jesus' time, when referring to demons.
By the middle ages, demonology was a full-blown study of the Church, with links not just to pagan deities but to the power of Satan. The fifteenth-century Spanish bishop Alfonso de Spina wrote that there were 133,316,666 demons, based on his exegesis of Revelations 12 that one-third of fallen angels had become demons with the power to inhabit souls. In case you are concerned over such a high number, a century later Johann Weyer, a Dutch doctor-theologian, decided that there were only 44,435,622 demons that could inhabit a body; in fact, as a medical doctor, he was sometimes called upon to provide expert testimony in witchcraft trials regarding which demons inhabited the poor women who were then adjudged guilty and, of course, burned at the stake.
Belief in demons has been strong over the centuries, and not just because Jesus is credited with casting them out on several occasions, such as the passage we read this morning, but also because people such as Paul believed in demons, noting that they could also assume an appearance such as an angel of light, as he wrote in 1 Corinthians.
Demons not only inhabited witches in the Middle Ages who were assumed to be responsible for the plague, known as the Black Death, due to the color of the tongue of an infected person but were depicted by artists such as Hieronymus Bosch as devil-like, with horns, tails, naked and seemingly male but without the appropriate genitalia. And, then, of course, there is the theology of exorcism, which is still alive and well.
But there are other kinds of demons as well. We use the word demon to describe forces that have overtaken lives and destroyed people. It is easy to see alcohol as a demon – remember the old “Demon Rum” cartoons?
Groups and persons are often demonized, provided with characteristics that set them outside and apart from us. The people become their characteristics in the eyes of others and then they are castigated, sometimes even killed, based on our perception of those characteristics.
There is another kind of demon as well. We are often unaware of the most powerful demons because they mask themselves through results which we usually consider positive, but they are demons, nevertheless. We are possessed by demons when something takes over our lives and pushes everything – and everyone – else out. Workaholics are possessed by demons: sometimes the goal is to make as much money as possible, often masked as making a better life for your family, a worthy goal.
Scripture only tells us that Jesus cast out demons and that he “would not permit them to speak because they knew him,” Just as those demons knew Jesus, our demons also know us. They know how to control us. At times, we also know our own demons, those things that we permit to rake over our lives. At other times, we are really puzzled when our best intentions go awry.
Our question then becomes: how can we free ourselves from the demons that control our lives. It seems there is a sequence that enables us to do this. First, we have to recognize the demon and name it. No easy task, to be sure, because we are so consumed by the demon that we often do not even recognize it when it presents itself.
After we recognize the demon and name it, then we must develop a strategy to combat it. We must create a climate of healing from its power. Just as demons often are not individual, so the climate of healing cannot be individual but must take into account the supporting cast: spouses, children, even friends. The demons that enter our lives affect those around us and those around us must be involved in freeing ourselves from our demons.
For some demons, societal demons, the climate of healing is a bit more complicated. Our national obsession with making money is a societal demon. Its etiology is not easily determined; thus, we must be careful in the diagnosis as well as prognosis and desired cure. And, in the final analysis, we want to make sure that the cure is not worse than the illness.
The Gospel writers tell us that it is Jesus' declaration of the coming of the kingdom that sets the stage or th expulsion of the demons of this world. Jesus does more than talk; he acts. People are healed and set free the demons that control their lives. Often their etiology is not known. One interesting thing in this passage is that Jesus had to withdraw to gain strength for himself as well as to be a strength for others.
Jesus was not all things to all people. As a human being, he also experienced human limitations, something we don't consider too often. We, too, experience our own human limitations. We cannot be all things to all people. Sometimes, because we try, the point gets driven home with a vengeance. Jesus realized this, so he withdrew to gain strength to continue with his mission: proclaiming the kingdom. And what does that mean?
It means standing up to the evils of the world around us and telling the truth as we see it, but always remembering that we, too, can be possessed by demons, even demons that would sacrifice those whom we love the most to our so-called goals. In his curing the man of his demons, Jesus was truly revolutionary. He did not stop to check out the man; he simply faces the demon. What's interesting, of course, is that the demons knew him – and our demons know us. They know how to take possession of us, feeding into our dreams and desires, our fantasies and feelings. That's what makes them so dangerous.
In Hebrew scriptures, the words that are translated as demons refer to those forces, gods, or things outside of us; in reality, however, what seems to be outside of us is inside of us. They work their power in strange ways, ways that speak to us where we are. Individual demons have a societal facet to them, to be sure, for our greed results in the enormous income inequality that exists in our nation today and our so-called patriotism feeds into a disregard for the opinions of other countries and societies. It's very easy to think of our demons as something apart from us, such as foreign gods. The foreign gods are very much our gods. Very much so.
It is easy to succumb to the demons that possess us. Fear is a basic element of creating demons. We need to drive the demons of hatred and prejudice out of our national soul just as we can drive the demons that inhabit our individual souls. We need to call demons by their names. Then they lose their power – over us and everything else. Then we are truly free.
Let us come to God in prayer: We are grateful for the One who can drive out the demons that inhabit us. Help us to seek each other in community so the demons have no place to grow within us. In the name of the One who frees us from every evil, even Christ Jesus, our Lord. Amen.