Exorcism and the Power of God

Only one person has ever asked me to perform an exorcism. It was at the blessing of the animals service in October. It was a cool fall afternoon in Wichita, Kansas. A man came up with his dog so that I could give his dog a blessing and a St. Francis medal. He wanted to know if I could perform an exorcism on his dog. I of course refused, after all, the dog only seemed wild, not possessed.

Do you believe in exorcisms? They seem kind of medieval to me. Both medieval and judgmental. If someone asked me to perform one, I would refer them to the Bishop. M Scott Peck writes a book about performing exorcisms. I found it kind of self-congratulatory and strange. Most of us don’t believe that exorcisms are necessary or particularly helpful. And yet, most of us are fascinated with the idea.

In youth groups, I get the question about whether or not I have performed an exorcism, particularly late at night at camp outs this seems to come up. One of the most popular films of my generation was the Exorcist, when Satan inhabits a little girl and she is absolutely terrifying.

We don’t like to talk of possession nowadays, but we are fascinated with the demonic. One of the most popular movies of our day is Twilight and its succeeding films. Based on a book, the story is about a young woman who falls in love with a vampire. Her love affair with a man who is immortal makes a kind of darker teen flick and it is riotously popular, grossing millions of dollars. The plot is simplistic, but there is something about the innocent tangling with darkness that just fascinates people.

On the far side of the Sea of Gallilee, there are some steep hills. This was known as the country of the Gerasenes. And there was a man living there who was possessed.

What is possession? What did people of Jesus’ day define as possession? Back then, there was very little medical knowledge, certainly none of the language that we now use to refer to mental illness or neurological disorders. Someone who had, say, epilepsy, was considered to be possessed because the person would all of a sudden go out of their minds, begin foaming at the mouth and writhe around on the ground. Obviously, it seemed to these people that something sinister was taking control of the person’s body, hence the notion of possession. The same was true of the paranoid schizophrenic, so seemed to be talking to people that weren’t there, or hurting themselves for no apparent reason-they too would have been seen as possessed. Something was taking over the person’s body and mind and they were not able to lead a normal life.

These were frightening, catastrophic forces that were tearing apart their loved ones and causing them to behave in ways that could not be otherwise understood. Sometimes I think that we have become so medical that we sanitize these diagnoses, making them seem like getting the flu and in doing that, we underestimate the struggle and the power that these illnesses have on the human mind and heart. The word demon is a powerful word, maybe we need to reclaim it.

In the land of the Gerasenes, there was a man who had many demons. His behavior was scary and erratic. He would tear off his clothing, bruise himself with rocks, break any chains that they placed on him and run into the wild. He would make his home in the graveyard and scream at anyone who came near. Obviously he was out of his mind, so the villagers understood him to be possessed.

When Jesus sees the man, the demons inside him beg for mercy. They seem like helpless children, unable to put up a fight. They recognize Jesus as the Son of God and beg him not to send them into what they call ‘the abyss’. Jesus decides to send them into some pigs instead. He listens to their request and he finds living bodies for them to inhabit.

Jesus heals this man’s mind. There is no other way to explain the gospel account. He sends the demons into a herd of pigs, and the herd runs down the hill and into the sea. Standing on this high hill many years ago, I saw how steep it was. Anyone, animal or human, who tried to run down that hill would most surely end up in the water. It was that steep.

The owners of the pigs go to the village to process who has happened and no doubt to complain that their pigs have drowned. When the villagers see Jesus and the man who was possessed sitting at his feet, they become afraid. And they ask Jesus to leave. He heals a man and they ask him to leave.

They were afraid of Jesus, afraid of what he might ask of them, afraid of what he might do to them. He was able to turn their world upside down and make a crazy man well. They did not want their world turned upside down. They were afraid of what he might ask of them, what he might do to them. They were afraid because they could not make sense of what they had seen. How could someone have cured the man who had bothered them and frightened them for so many years? They could not fathom what Jesus had done or how he had done it , so they asked him to leave. We are all afraid of Jesus. I am convinced of it. They would have rather lived around a demoniac than encounter the power of God. Life as they knew it was preferable to the change that Jesus would no doubt bring.



Strange isn’t it, to think of being afraid of Jesus? Most of us would deny that we are afraid, but I do think that we are afraid. One of the signs of our fear is our incessant business. Those of us who are comfortable in life, who aren’t battling great illness or hardship, we spend our days consumed with minutia. We are busier than we have ever been before. We claim that we have no time, though we have greater lifespans than any humans ever have had in world history. We have no time for God because we are not sure if we want to allow God inside our hearts too thoroughly. We don’t want God taking over.

We relegate stories like this one to the back-burner. We do not talk about healings very much, or demons, or things that we don’t understand. They are for entertainment, for horror shows and story lines, but not to be discussed seriously. Talking about demons or angels seems so uncool, so old school, like one who has no education or is just a little off.

But quantum physics is telling us that there are many more dimensions than the three that we perceive. Why could there not be forces that we do not see? Who is to say that there are not angels dancing in front of our eyes at this very minute? Do you really know that they are not there?

In the Eucharistic prayer that we say, we articulate the ancient belief that we celebrate the Eucharist with angels and archangels, with all the company of heaven. Think about that for a moment. With all the company of heaven. And if there indeed are such things as angels, (and I don’t mean those fat cupid babies, I mean something majestic and frightening!), then why should there not also be something demonic, something dark to contend with. Something that interferes with our journey to God. When I watch an alcoholic drink himself to death, you cannot tell me that he is not in a spiritual battle with SOMETHING.

I think we write off these things that the Scripture called demons and angels because to admit their existence would be to admit that we are not in control of our world. And we want to be in control. We live in the era of independence and everything in my life is supposed to me within my control: I can make myself healthy, happy, successful, if I just work hard enough. No wonder we don’t like the idea of demons. That would never sell. And I don’t want the kind of God who will interfere in my life.

What I want is some kind of on-call God. I want the kind of Jesus who immediately appears when I need him, when I am in pain or suffering. But when things are going great, I don’t want him asking anything of me. Just leave me be when I am comfortable. Don’t mess with me too much. I don’t want a God who will demand all of me.

That’s why God tends to come to us when we are down, because we really invite him in at that time. Elijah, in the first book of Kings, is fleeing for his life and feeling so bad that he wants to die and only then, when he gives up on living his life as he saw fit, only then does he experience the presence of God in the sound of sheer silence. It is only when he gives up on his own way that he is able to experience God’s way.

So long as you and I remain busy and frantic, God will wait on the sidelines, waiting for us to spin our wheels long enough to realize that we don’t do it so well on our own. And then, hopefully, one day, we will invite Jesus deep into our hearts, to the core of our being, for we want to be possessed by no one other than him.

Every Sunday, we will have moments of silence in worship. This is intentional. I want to stop and just be with you for a moment. I want to listen to the sound of sheer silence and wrap ourselves up in it. I want to wait for God, rather than asking God to catch up with us. I want to be on call for God, rather than asking God to be on-call for me. That silence is scary. That silence is powerful because it is not in our control. And that is why it is so vital to our worship. There could be angels and archangels in that silence. And if we listen, we might hear something eloquent.

The only one who wanted to stay with Jesus in the land of the Gerasenes was the demoniac himself. He knew what it was to let God inside and he wanted nothing more than to be with Jesus always. His battle with darkness had taught him that he needed God, even if that meant giving up the driving seat in his life. He was ready to let God be in control. Are you?

The Oil Spill and Our Emptiness

At night, I close my eyes and I can see the oil exploding out of the damaged pipeline. It comes to my mind in spare moments, when I am least expecting it. JD has taken to opening up his laptop at night and just staring at that live image. Oil infiltrating water, covering animals, killing the oceans organisms. I cannot look at it for long. I realize that I am praying. I am asking God to make it stop and I am asking God to show us how to live less destructively.

Everybody wants to blame everybody else for the oil spill. It’s BP’s fault for sure, but it’s also the fault of our government or the fault of the consumer who wants oil or the fault of ecoterrorists. It has to be somebody’s fault. The reality is that it is all of our faults. The complexity of the human relationship with the creation is so overwhelming. We have made so many mistakes. We have made so many mistakes.

I am not interested in prescribing whose fault this is, or whether or not we should have offshore drilling or what kind of car you should drive or not drive… What I am interested in is this: How do we begin to think of this environmental disaster from a theological perspective? What does it tell us about God and our relationship with God? And what does it tell us about who we are as human beings?

In the second book of Samuel, David is King of Israel at the height of the golden age. This was the highest moment in the history of Israel. David had united the kingdom and defeated all their enemies. He was a wonderful, powerful king. He was fierce in battle and had the love of the people behind him. Everything was good in his life. Everything. But he was not satisfied. He wanted more.

We see this phenomenon with our celebrities. They have more money than most of us can imagine, they have beauty, they are adored. But they want more. Often they buy things in great excess, or take drugs, looking for something more to fill them. Suicide rates skyrocket, strangely among those who seem to have everything.

David had everything. Then one night, he saw something that he couldn’t have. He was walking along his rooftop to get away from the heat. The king’s rooftop was above all others, it was a sign of his prestige and rank. So David could look out and see all the rooftops below him. And there, on one of the rooftops, was a woman. It was her time of the month so she was bathing, naked. And he wanted her.

David had more wives than the Bible cares to count. He could have had any of them, but instead he wanted the wife of Uriah the Hittite. And so he took her, even though she was married. He knew that this was wrong, but he wanted to satiate his desire. He wanted her more than he cared about what was right.

When Bathsheeba gets pregnant, David invites her husband back from war hoping that he will sleep with her. But Uriah is a virtuous man, a man with discipline, and he follows the custom that teaches that a man should not sleep with his wife when his men are in battle. So David has Uriah sent back to the war, to the front of the line, and there Uriah is killed.

Desire becomes Adultery. Adultery becomes murder.

And then the sin begins to spread. Sin is viral, you know. If it is not acknowledged and treated, it affects generations-generations feels the effects of failed relationships, of anger, jealousy, cruelty. David’s children end up fighting. One of them is raped by her half-brother, another is murdered. David’s life goes from glory to a chaotic bad soap opera and all because he could not keep his hands to himself. All because he took what did not belong to him.

When the prophet comes to David and tells a story of a little ewe lamb that is taken by the man who has so many lambs, David is incensed. Then the prophet reveals that it is David himself who is the man. And David suffers from that day forward.

Why do we suffer? We human beings suffer because we do not know how to curb our desire. We want more than we need. We take what we do not need. And our world suffers. Our planet suffers.

If every human being gave away ten percent of his or her income to the poor, the world would be altered forever. Hunger would be alleviated. It would be over.

But we cannot stop taking and wanting and wanting and taking. It all reaches back to that moment in Eden when Eve took something that God had forbidden her to take. Things have always been out of balance since that original fall.

We did not fall by having sex or drinking, but by taking.

So what do we do with our condition, the condition of wanting more than we need?

We begin by knowing that God loves us and has filled our need. God gave us the ultimate gift in Jesus, a gift that, once we fully understand it, should fill every need.

You no longer need anything. You have everything that you need. Everything.

The Pharisees did not know that, but the poor woman did. She knew that Jesus gave her everything, even though her whole life had been a mess. She knew that he alone could bring her joy.

So she poured oil over his feet. It ran down his ankles, between his toes, on the floor, and its smell filled the room. She wiped his feet with her hair, making it oily and messy. She looked like a fool for him. And she did not care.

God doesn’t ask you for anything. Not for anything. God just gives and gives. Even as oil pours out of the burst pipeline, God gives. We really don’t need to give anything in return, but when we get the gift, we want to give another kind of oil. We want to pour out our hearts to him and give him everything.

Strange isn’t it? We have already been filled to overflowing by God’s generosity in Jesus. And yet, out of habit and ignorance, we continue to act as if we need to be filled. But God has already given us everything. EVERYTHING.

The Word of God Online?

The tomb of Helen Keller can be found on the grounds of the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C.


Helen Keller, the famous scholar and writer, became deaf and blind after a terrible illness in early childhood. As a result, she grew up savage-like in a home full of people who did not understand her. In the play, the Miracle Worker, Helen is saved by a young woman who comes to teach her. After months of battles, the young woman, Annie, has taught Helen how to have manners, how to eat properly, how to behave. But Helen remains alone in darkness. Over and over again, Annie will spell into Helen’s hands. Helen mimics the spelling and receives rewards, but never is she able to connect the letter with the meaning of a word, the actual connection between the word and the thing itself eludes her.

One day, Helen has felt her way to the water pump in the yard. As Helen pumps the water and lets it run cool over her hands, Annie spells the word W-A-T-E-R. Water. Again, Annie spells water into Helen’s palm as the cool liquid runs over her hand and out between her fingers.

Helen stops pumping. She would later write that in that moment, she awoke to life. All had been darkness before that moment. Before that moment, she was completely and totally alone in a world with no meaning, nothing but chaos was before her. But in that one moment, Helen recalled the one word that she had learned when she was just a toddler, right before she became ill. The word, as she had pronounced it, was WAWA.

WAWA, Water-Helen realized that the Word was a way of connecting to the liquid that had poured over her hand. Life and light entered her mind and her world, literally, began that day. She was born to the Word and the Word was born in her.

In the beginning was the Word…what came into being in him was life and the life was the light of all people. The Gospel of John



God is the Word. God is the Connection. God is the AHA moment.

God is present in the office of a therapist who has counseled and listened to the same man for years. Yet on this particular day, the therapist and gently repeats an insight that he has had and is able to communicate to the man a pattern in his behavior so that the man can see, for the first time in his life, that he is wounded, that he is good and that he is loved.



God is present when someone plays the most beautiful music, music that lifts the soul to levels that it has never experienced and a young woman sits in the concert hall and weeps and she cannot even explain why.



God is present when a mathmetician cannot solve a problem and he goes to bed in chaos and confusion. Then, just before the dawn, he awakens and the solution is clearly before him, like a gift from God. It is so simple and so clear. Why did he not see it before?

In the beginning was the Connection…

In the beginning was the Aha moment…

In the beginning was the…CLICK?

That is the question of our day, isn’t it? Is God present in the click? Can God be present online? Can the Word of God, the Logos, the meaning that gives life to all things, can it be conveyed in cyberspace?

I do not think that it is our job to answer this question. Rather, it is our job to send out the word, and see if it takes.

Annie did not know if the Logos would ever reach Helen Keller through the signs that she was making over and over and over again into the small hand of that child. Over and over again, Hellen Keller would receive spelled letters in her hand and it was nothing but an exercise, a game. Over and over again Annie spelled the letters that represented new objects and better objects. Helen would repeat them back but they meant nothing to her. There was no connection between the spelling of a word and the meaning or representation of the thing itself.

Annie would not give up because she knew that finding a way to connect with Helen meant the difference between light and darkness to that little girl. It was the difference between life and death.

Do I know how people will encounter God online? I have no idea! But as leaders in the Church, it is our call and our duty to keep spelling the Word into peoples hands in every way that we know how. And we must try to spell out the Word in every medium known to us, including cyberspace. If there is even a remote chance that God will reach out an touch the heart of a lost soul over the computer screen, then we must get to work!

Annie did not know that Hellen would hear her on that thousanth time that she sent out the same message of meaning to that little wild girl. She had no idea that on that day, it would be that word that would be heard. She spread seeds of the word every day, and waited for something to take root in Helen’s heart.

God continues to call us with the ancient words of Jesus. They speak to us over thousands of years… Go forth and preach the gospel – Go and tell folks that I love them. God calls to us to bring light and life to the world. We are to continue to spread the gospel, to spell out those words of God and this incredible man called Jesus over and over again. We are called to spell under water, in the air, online, in the movies, on skype and facebook and twitter and flikr.

Logos Online