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?
