Christ Church Cathedral - Epiphany 5

February 9, 03

Casting Out Demons

Isa 40:21-31, Mark 1:40-45

by The Rev'd Patricia Drummond

Two weeks ago I gave a sermon on Christ's call to follow him. Today the gospel reading gives me the opportunity to talk a little more about the journey which follows acceptance of the call.

The great architect Frank Lloyd Wright used to talk about an incident which had a great effect on his life. In the winter when he was 9, he went walking across a snow covered field with his reserved no-nonsense uncle. At the far end of the field, his uncle stopped him. He pointed out his own tracks in the snow, straight and true as an arrow's flight, and then young Frank's tracks meandering all over the field. "Notice how your tracks wander aimlessly from the fence to the cattle to the woods and back again," his uncle said, "And see how my tracks aim directly at my goal. There is an important lesson in that." "I determined right then," said Frank Lloyd Wright, "not to miss the things in life that my uncle had missed." Now it is often necessary to be purposeful and goal oriented, but young Frank had discovered what many don't learn until much, much later in life - the importance of the journey.

Ana Watts is the editor of the New Brunswick Anglican. From time to time, she puts a column of her own in the paper called "Getting There." In it she reflects upon incidents in her life with her family, in the church, or in the events around her and how they fit- or don't - into the big picture - that of getting closer and closer to Christ and his plan for us. Ana has recognised that the journey matters.

A few years ago I read one or two of Gail Sheehy's books on the passages of life - accounts of the changes through which people pass as they move from youth to maturity. She found, not surprisingly, I think, that those who were happiest in retirement and old age were those who felt they were making a difference, those who believed they would leave things a little better than when they came into this world, those who were making time on the journey to give themselves to some form of service, for service gives joy.

In today's gospel, Mark describes how Jesus began his ministry in Galilee, teaching with unique authority and healing the sick and the demon possessed.

We are often uncomfortable today with the idea of demon possession, but in the area round the Mediterranean in the first century the spirit world was as real to people as the physical one and was believed to affect it, causing good things to happen, or bad, and producing good or ill health. Amulets were sometimes worn to ward off evil spirits, and people believed in magic. The spirits were part of a cosmic hierarchy - a pyramid of influence. The gods were at the top, then came the sons of gods, followed by good and evil spirits and then human beings. In demonstrating his ability to heal and to cast out evil spirts, Jesus' position in the hierarchy was established.

Simon's mother-in-law was the second person healed in Mark's gospel, and she was followed by a multitude of sick and demon possessed. You see Jesus did more than talk authoritatively about how to live a good life, how to be merciful and how to truly love as God wished. He acted upon his words. He was on his own journey, but he knew that to be taken seriously when he spoke, he must walk the talk. He must not only speak of the Kingdom of Heaven. He must give glimpses of it. He must not only talk of loving one's neighbour. He must show how to. When he died and rose to reign in heaven with the Father, he gave us his authority through the power of the Holy Spirit. Authority not to do our will, but his, that his will will indeed be done on earth as in heaven. It is now our job to heal the sick, to cast out demons, to change what is wrong, to redeem what appears to be lost and to proclaim his Kingdom.

There is a job to be done in the world and there is a job to be done in the church, and it is certain that none of it is easy, for bringing about change never is.

What are the sicknesses and demons that inhabit today's world? What might we seek to cast out in Jesus' name? We might give them such names as negativism - that willingness, even eagerness, to denounce everyone and everything and to react cynically to those with enthusiasm who are eager to try new things. We might call another demon greed. The urge to have more - more money, more power, more influence, even if it means trampling others in the process. Some have said that the demon greed may be at least partly to blame for the urge to go to war with Iraq, the second most oil rich country in the world. Another might be the demon of revenge - responsible for so many conflicts over the years - war in Northern Ireland, war in Yugoslavia, war in Palestine to name just three, but closer to home, also responsible for so much unhappiness in broken family situations, where past hurts and betrayals continue to haunt and are so hard to forgive and forget. One might also name such demons as poverty and child pornography, and the list goes on.

Some of these issues seem so big that one wonders what or who could ever change them. Perhaps we should remember that in very recent history the Berlin Wall has come down, apartheid has ended in South Africa and the Soviet Union has dissolved. These are events that twenty years ago everyone would have thought impossible because there was such power behind them.

The Church also has its demons and their aim is its destruction. They have caused the loss over the last decade of many members in the mainline churches, and a resulting decline in financial support. There is the great drop in numbers of children and young people, a tide which in New Brunswick we Anglicans are doing our very best to turn. There is the problem of music, one of the greatest gifts of God to his people, but an area which Anglican priest, Marney Patterson, claims, has in some churches been turned by modern demons into the War Department. There is the problem of abuse by a few which has caused the integrity of whole denominations to be questioned and has threatened to bankrupt them and it is to be hoped that the agreement just reached between the Anglican Church of Canada and the Government will help to alleviate this situation. And then there are churches which live unto themselves when there is a mission field right on their doorsteps.

Let me use an illustration. Once upon a time a Russian czar was walking through his vast gardens when he came upon a sentry standing guard over what appeared to be a clump of weeds. When asked what he was doing there, the guard replied that he was just carrying out orders. The czar then called the captain of the guard and asked him the same question. His answer was the same. Finally the commanding general for the whole area was called in. When asked about the guard, he replied that when he had assumed command of the area, the orders were on the books, and so he continued to have them carried out.

By this time the czar was more than just curious, and he ordered that the records be searched until the answer was found. Finally the archives yielded the answer. A hundred years before, Catherine the Great had imported a rare rose from England, and to make sure that no one bothered it, she ordered a guard posted over it. Of course, the rose had long since died, and only a clump of weeds marked the spot where the rose had grown. But the guard had been maintained all those years. There was no longer a reason for it. In the same way some religious institutions carefully guard things which have been added to the basics of the faith over the centuries but may be no longer useful or relevant for a new generation, and, in fact, cause that new generation to find spiritual fulfilment elsewhere.

In today's gospel story, Jesus went against tradition. He took the hand of Simon's mother-in-law. Rabbis were very unlikely to take the hand of a woman unrelated to them. This was especially so since she was sick and therefore unclean and that it was the Sabbath would have compounded the offense. When the woman got up and waited upon the group, she may well have been breaking the law which required one to do no work on the Sabbath.

Jesus acted out of love and not according to traditional legalism. He obeyed God's higher Law.

He was what Madeleine L'Engle calls a "universe disturber", One who makes waves, rocks boats, upsets establishments - and often gets hurt. There have been many others who have made changes in this world for the love of humanity through dogged persistence and often at great personal expense. Think of Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King. Think of Dorothea Dix, working to build mental hospitals so psychiatric patients would not be held in prisons, or Mother Theresa, leaving the comfort of a middle class European home to work in the slums of Calcutta.

And one can be a universe disturber in a much smaller way. It requires standing up to be counted in the fight against any modern demon, helping in some small way to fight poverty, being positive and encouraging in the face of cynicism, refusing to retaliate in ongoing disputes, and trying to do as Jesus, the greatest Universe disturber of all, would have done.

I'll finish by quoting Madeleine L'Engle. She says this: "Those of us who try to follow Jesus' way have a choice, either to go with him as Universe Disturbers, or to play it safe. Playing it safe leads to personal diminishment and death. If we play it safe, we resist change. Well, we all resist change, beginning as small children with our unvarying bedtime routine, continuing all through our lives. The static condition may seem like security. But if we cannot move into change willingly or reluctantly, we are closer to death and further from life. None of us will escape the moment when we have to decide whether to withdraw, to play it safe, or to act upon what we prayerfully believe to be right."

Let me repeat a few verses from our Isaiah reading : He gives power to the faint and strengthens the powerless . . . those who wait for the Lord will renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings like eagles; they will run and not be weary, they will walk and not be faint.

Let us determine to recognise the importance of the journey, and to use our God given strength to give ourselves to service, to cast out demons wherever we find them, and to follow Jesus into life. Amen.