An Army of Demons (Proper 7C)

 

“An Army of Demons”
Second Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 7C)
8 a.m. and 10:00 said Eucharist with hymns

19 June 2022
Homily
St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Medford OR

The Rev. Dr. Anthony Hutchinson, homilist

Isaiah 65:1-9; Psalm 22:18-27; Galatians 3:23-29; Luke 8:26-39

Lord, you trouble our peace,

you step upon our guarded shore

and confront our chaos:

may we who are divided and colonized by the forces of death

learn from you to speak our own name and proclaim your works of life;

through Jesus Christ, Tamer of Legions.

 

Most healing stories in the gospels are pretty simple:  There’s an afflicted person, and Jesus fixes them.  Here, Jesus confronts what seems to be a primal force of nature, uncontrollable and uncontrolled. “For a long time [the afflicted man] had worn no clothes… Many times [the demon] had seized him; he was kept under guard and bound with chains and shackles, but he would break the bonds and be driven into the wilds.”  This guy has been through the wringer—multiple possessions, getting worse until he ends up raving, naked, and bleeding in a graveyard.  Here is something deeper and darker than normal illness, something intractable and overwhelming.

 

Jesus starts to cast the demon out; it argues with him, “Why am I any of your business?   Don’t hurt me!”   Jesus asks the demon its name, a prelude to exorcism in that day and age. It replies, “We are legion.”  Not very helpful: more a taunt than a name.  “Legion” was a 6,000 soldier-strong battalion in the Roman Army.   “My name?  I am so numerous as to be almost chaotic, as strong as the Roman imperium, and as violent as an army.  My name? Legion.”    

 

These demons are violent and expect the same of Jesus.  They call him Son of God but think this just means someone more violent and powerful than they are: “Don’t torment us, or cast us into the pit!”  But instead, without using violence, he drives them out of the poor man.  He even gives them their wish, to go into a herd of swine.  But alas, the violence of the demons is just too overpowering: the pigs panic and run headlong into the sea, drowning.  This terrifies everyone there. They beg Jesus to leave, just as afraid of violence from him as the demons. 

 

This story is about healing a mental illness, since people then blamed demons for madness. But “demons” also had another meaning.  They often are the personification not just of personal interior conflicts, but also of the unseen movers behind the world we see, the drivers we cannot see or explain.  When Paul talks about “thrones, dominions, rulers, and powers” (Col. 1:16) in God’s creation, he is thinking of spiritual beings, whether angelic or demonic, at work in the world around us.    We identify these same forces more abstractly, and less personally. We call them institutions, cultures, governments, corporations, power structures, ideologies, and value systems.

 

That’s why the great social conscience theologian of our age, Walter Wink, entitled his books Naming…, Unmasking…, and, Engaging the Powers.   He saw with clear vision these dark forces in the world around us that fight against God’s good intention for creation: abundance, peace, and justice.

 

We have seen dark forces at work in our country these last few weeks: a gunman’s racist murder of 10 African-Americans who were grocery shopping in Buffalo New York on May 14, the murder of one and serious wounding of 5 Taiwanese-American Christians worshipping in a Santa Ana California Church on May 17 by someone with a grudge against Taiwan, the slaughter of 19 first graders and their teachers in Uvalde Texas on May 24 by someone who felt he had been ill used by the school, and just a couple of days ago, the killing of three people at a church potluck at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Birmingham Alabama by gunman described by police as “an occasional attendee” of the Church.    

 

These incidents are just part of an almost unending stream of mass killings using fire arms, a bloody litany that has gone for years: enraged and unstable men—most of them young—using military weaponry to kill people targeted because of their race, their gender, their religion, their sexual orientation, or sexual identity.  Children are targeted because they are helpless, easy targets for murderous rage especially ones with a grudge against the children’s school or community.    

 

I will not demean this pulpit by making it a political platform, so I am not going to talk about specific reasons for this horror, or what effective steps we might take to end it.  But the Gospel requires us to name evil.  It may help us see things more clearly. 

 

Demons, primal and intractable as Legion, possess us as a people.  These demons are not named Azazel or Beelzebub.  We call them by abstract names, and Jesus has something to say to each:

Violence:  It seems that the violence that plagues us is uncontrollable, just like Legion.   We glorify violence in our arts, have movies that tell stories of the good guys blowing the bad guys away, use armed force as a major component of our foreign policy, proclaim it in our political memes, and think that capital punishment is the ultimate solution to horrible crime.  Guns are an important part of this culture of violence.  Richard Slotkin in Gunfighter Nation: The Myth of the Frontier in Twentieth Century America says that our culture embraces the idea that there is no problem so severe that it wouldn’t improve if we could just shoot someone.  Walter Wink called this the false “myth of redemptive violence.”   To this, Jesus says, “those who live by the sword will die by it,” and “if someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him your left.”

 

Fear:  Closely tied to this fascination with violence, is fear.  Most people who buy guns and who argue for no restrictions on gun ownership appeal to “self-defense” as their motivation.  They buy guns and want others to buy guns because of fear.   Fear makes us hunger at a banquet, be stingy with abundance, and externalize all our problems.  To this, Jesus says, “be not afraid, I am with you.”  

 

Rejection of the Stranger: Blaming our problems on someone else, we scapegoat.  We make them bear the blame and take it outside the wall.  To this Jesus says, “welcome and care for the alien and foreigner, for you too were once aliens,” and “the only thing that will matter on the last day will be whether you cared for the most vulnerable and least able to care for themselves.” 

 

Disgust:  Blaming our problems on other people might seem a bit too unfair. So we say “love the sinner hate the sin.”  We objectify evil and bad and identify it with anything with which we are unfamiliar or uncomfortable.  Disgust is the most common emotion we experience as we do this; we see the object of our disgust as impure, unclean, corrupt.  Disgust is an instinctual emotion that tries to keep us safe by keeping us from eating or touching poisonous or contaminated things.  But when it becomes part of a system of exclusion or oppression, it is a demon of great power.   Using any reason—different sex, language, cultural practices, sexual orientation, skin color or hair texture, being a vulnerable school child—any reason to take away in our minds the image of God in a human being and replace it with a cartoon caricature of evil is wickedness itself.  Homophobia is a sin.  Sexism is a sin.  Racism is a sin.  Anti-Semitism is a sin.  Xenophobia and nativist political ideology are a sin.  Hating people because they seem more privileged and loved than us—that’s a sin too. It’s that simple.   To this demon of disgust at the stranger, Jesus says, “Love each other.  Treat others as you would be treated.  Pray for your enemies and bless those who misuse you.” 

 

Rage and Hatred: whether the result of being bullied, excluded, or not getting the privilege we think we deserve, murderous rage is behind almost all of these horrors.  To this, Jesus says, “Each day, do not let the sun set on your anger. Forgive.” He does not ask us to be doormats, helpless and willing victims, but he insists that when we hold others accountable for their actions we do so peacefully, and never lose sight of their humanity.    

 

Power, Control, and Wealth:  The gun lobby draws its strength from the money of gun manufacturers and merchants and the greed of politicians eager to sell their souls for power.  To those in the thrall of these demons, Jesus says “You need to lose your life in order to save it,” “not as I will, but as you will,” and “You cannot serve both God and money.”  

 

Madness: the demon that afflicted that naked man in Gerasa, clearly afflicts some of these killers.  Jesus shows us the example: help them.  Care for them.  Even madness can be healed. 

 

“Righteous” Anger:  Some of the killers point to their scripture’s rage and desire to punish evil as a model for their monstrous actions.  Unhappily, the Scriptures of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all contain a few passages that incite violence against the ungodly and the impure.   These do not represent the heart of God.  These same Scriptures also all dream of a world from which murderous violence has been finally exorcised.  The prophets sing of a world where swords have become farming tools and where natural enemies dwell in peace together. All major faiths teach that God’s most basic nature is steadfast loving kindness.

 

Some many demons!  One definition of insanity is always trying the same thing over and over again, and expecting different results.   In America, guns and our obsession with power, privilege, and wealth have possessed us, made us insane. 

 

Those songs of the prophets tell of a world no longer haunted by war, horror, or hunger.  This is what God wants for us.  

Legion, breaking all the chains and bonds, bursts forth to terrorize us. Legion brings us to the grave mourning again and again.  We wait in the graveyard, head bloodied and body aching, for deliverance.  We—gay, straight, trans, cis, whites, blacks, Latinos, Muslims, Christians, Jews, Indians, Americans long here and newly arrived—we wait and we hope. We, not them and us.  And we pray that those songs of freedom and peace open all our hearts so we work together to drive away the army of demons.   We must work to change things.  To do otherwise is to accept the fate of the Gadarene swine. 

 

Jesus in today’s story assures us one day we will sit together again, clothed and in our right minds.  

 

Amen.