There is a man who works
at Walgreens. As he checks people out,
he tells them God bless you. He saw me
one day in my collar and he has now taken to witnessing to me. He is an old black man with glasses. He is a beautiful soul.
On Friday night, I came
in to Walgreens. I was only wearing
jeans and a sweatshirt but he remembered who I was. “People come in here all confused about their
lives,” he said. “They think that their
lives are such a mess but they don’t know how to clean them up! They think that
they are fighting to get more stuff, or fighting their spouse. They complain about their health and the
medications that they take. But they
don’t realize what they are really fighting!
And they don’t realize the power of prayer…”
“Amen,” I said. “Amen, brother, Amen!” You never know when
the Word will be preached to you, it may even be in Walgreens.
Did you know that for
hundreds of years, people thought that Moses had horns? The Vulgate, the Latin translation of the
Bible, mistranslated the verses we read from Exodus today. Instead of translating the Hebrew word Keren
as light, for light shined from his head, they translated qeren as horns. So Moses went from radiating the light of God to
looking like some kind of goat or devil all because some scholar got confused
and translated wrong. Michelangelo made
an incredible statue of Moses with horns.
It took hundreds of years before people cleaned up that mess of a
translation and found the truth again.
Jesus’ face radiated
light too, when he became part of God in a mystical experience on Mount
Tabor. Moses and Elijah joined him in
the light. Jesus was home, in ecstasy
with God and the prophets until Peter interrupts the bliss to try and make
another mess, to build booths out of stone and dirt and ruins the moment. God tells Peter to listen but Jesus says
nothing after this debacle. He just goes
down the mountain, presumably with the disciples following shamefully behind.
Peter must have realized by then that he ruined the moment and made a mess of
things. But no one talked about it.
The next day, however,
Jesus seems to lose his patience. They
encounter a crowd, full of needs and wants.
People want to be healed and people want their demons removed. Jesus is faced with a boy whose father pleads
desperately for him to be healed. The
boy has a demon that leads his body to convulse and foam at the mouth. The
disciples have tried to cast out this demon and they have failed. And something about this scene makes Jesus
really mad.
Jesus reminds me of when
I work all day and come home to find the house a mess. Do I have to do everything myself! He is angry not at the boy or his father but
at his disciples, who should have been able to rid this boy of the demon but,
for whatever reason, could not do it. So
Jesus is left to do it himself and he just wants to go back up that
mountain. “You faithless and perverse
generation! How long do I have to put up with you guys?” he says. Jesus just wants to go home.
There are some 63 exorcisms
in the New Testament, most all of them are in the first three gospels. There is no denying that casting out demons
was a major part of what Jesus did. Isn’t
it strange how little we talk about that?
Exorcisms were not
hard. Every time Jesus tells a demon to
leave, it goes. Sometimes it yells or says something on the way out. And the disciples for the most part do
exorcisms too. They are prayers in which
a demon or unclean spirit is told to leave.
You get the sense from Jesus that this was just like cleaning up a mess. It was a drain on his energy but he couldn’t
quite figure out why any believer couldn’t do it.
Such a huge part of the
Gospels, why don’t we talk about exorcisms?
Are they scary? Too messy? Do we not believe in demons? The boy in this gospel sounds like an
epileptic. Certainly epileptics exist.
I think that one of the
greatest faults of Christianity today is our failure to talk about demons and
to cast them out. Jesus gave us this authority.
But we chose to ignore it and we let our lives become a mess, fighting
with each other instead of realizing what it is we are really fighting.
One of my favorite movies
this past year is the War Room. It is
the story of Elizabeth and Tony Jordan.
They are successful and well-off.
They have a beautiful daughter. But their marriage is falling
apart. They fight all the time. He is tempted to have an affair. She is angry all the time. And then Elizabeth meets an elderly prayer
warrior named Miss Clara. And Miss Clara
teaches Elizabeth how to clean up her life by making a War Room.
A War Room is a prayer
room, usually made in some quite space or closet. In that room, Miss Clara tells Elizabeth to
study scripture and to pray for her husband.
Remember that it is the darkness that you are fighting, not your
husband. Clean your home of any
darkness. You husband must fight it too
inside himself but you start with yourself.
And slowly, Elizabeth learns to pray and her life begins to change.
The man at Walgreens was
right. We have let the waters of our lives
get too muddy. We have gotten confused
and angry and painted horns on our loved ones when they are beloved of
God. We have failed to realize that this
world is a battlefield between the forces of God and the forces of darkness.
Every decision that you make, every word that you say comes from either one
place or the other.
I read an article about a
man who is going to give up being a jerk for Lent. He is going to practice
kindness and put away all inclinations to be self-pitying or mean. It will be a battle for him but at least he
is beginning to fight the right way instead of fighting the people he loves.
Jesus wants us casting
out the darkness in our own lives and in the lives of others, working for the
good, for the truth, for the light.
Jesus, when talking of an exorcism, likens it to cleaning a house. Get rid of the bad thoughts, the
self-righteous, pitying, worried messes of your mind! Do good.
Strive for justice and kindness.
Give up being a jerk for Lent and edify those around you, no matter what
they do in response. It is time for us
to learn how to cast out the darkness.
