“Possessed!”
Mark 1:21-28
January 29, 2012
Ellie was angry. She had young children and a husband who
travelled for long periods of time. Her
father-in-law was living with them, and his physical ailments along with his emotional
and verbal abusiveness was creating stress for the entire family. Ellie was angry.
She was so angry that
one day when she’d had a particularly difficult exchange with her
father-in-law, she ran downstairs to the laundry room and kicked a full laundry
basket across the floor. Hard.
So hard in fact that
she broke her toe. She was embarrassed
to be that angry, embarrassed that she’d lost control like that. Humiliated that she’d actually caused harm to
herself because she couldn’t deal with her anger. And Ellie was never able to forget what
happened because from that point on whenever the weather changed, her toe
ached. She was reminded over and over
again of how powerful her anger was. In
her words, it was like being possessed.
Ellie shared this story
at a women’s retreat I participated in when I was an Associate Pastor in
Maryland. Although I didn’t want to admit it to anyone
then, I resonated with Ellie’s description of feeling possessed by anger. I’d been that angry before. So angry that I didn’t feel like I had control
over what I said or did. It’s as though
the anger takes over your entire being.
I’d felt that way before I heard Ellie’s story and I’ve felt that way
since. Possessed by an emotion I feel I
have no control over. Possessed in a way
that I do or say things I don’t mean and immediately wish that I could take
back.
According to most of
the commentators I’ve read in preparation for this sermon, I’m taking the wrong
tack by starting with the idea of being possessed. The scholars I’ve consulted
believe that the greater point in this passage from Mark is not that Jesus
healed a man besieged by a demon, but that Jesus has a previously unseen,
unheard of authority. He possesses an
authority that goes beyond even the scribes and Pharisees. He teaches and interprets Scripture with
authority, and through that authority he casts out a demon.
It is the demon who
recognizes Jesus for who he is. The
demon calls Jesus by the identifying title of Holy One of God. The only other ones who know this so far are
the readers. Mark has made it clear to
us who Jesus is, but the process of understanding for the people around Jesus
takes the entire gospel and beyond.
This is the first
account of a healing by Jesus in Mark’s gospel.
And this healing is probably the kind that we’re least comfortable with
in our Western, enlightened, scientific thinking. It’s one thing for Jesus to heal someone who
is physically ill, to bring that person into health and wholeness. But talk of demon possession makes us
uncomfortable doesn’t it? It does
me. So much was blamed on demons. People were irreparably harmed because it was
believed they were possessed by demons.
There was no understanding of emotional or mental illness; it was all
just pinned on demons. But let’s face it
even though we live in a scientific, enlightened age, what do we think of when
hear the phrase demon possession?
Anyone? Anyone?
I know what I think
of. I think of The Exorcist. I’ve never
even seen this movie, nor will I because I just don’t need to be that scared,
but I know enough about it and have seen enough pertinent clips to get the gist
of the movie. So when I think of demon
possession I still get a mental image of Linda Blair with her head spinning
around. And while The Exorcist may be the definitive demon possession movie, there
are still plenty more being made. Our
culture seems to be fascinated by them as equally as we are repelled.
But I think it’s far
more helpful for our purposes and for our understanding to see demons in a
different way. Dr. David Lose of
Workingpreacher.org writes about the demonic as that which opposes God, works
against God, breaks down, rips apart, and destroys. A demon is what keeps us separated from God
and from one another. If I am so
possessed with anger that I say or do something that causes great harm, then
that’s not working for God, is it? Even
if what I say or do harms myself.
If I am possessed by
greed or jealousy or despair or despondency then I am not about building up
God’s children, am I? I am not seeking
to create or mend, but to rip apart and destroy.
Thinking of this in
light of our passage from I Corinthians, if I am so possessed by my own belief
in what I know, or at least what I think I know, that I can actually cause harm
to come to someone else, then I am not just puffed up, I am possessed.
Possession grips us in
other ways. Think about those who are
addicted – whether it’s to drugs or alcohol, food or something else. There’s a line in a Tim McGraw song that
says, “This is for the lost junkie who spends all his hard-earned money on
something that he hates.” That’s a
description of possession.
And none of us are
immune from possession, from being gripped by something that feels much larger
than us, more powerful than us. Let’s
remember where Jesus encounters this demon possessed man. In the synagogue. The man was in church, listening to the
preaching and the teaching. When Jesus
speaks with his authority, the authority as the Holy One of God, the demon
recognizes him. The demon sees Jesus for
who he truly is. The demon calls out to
him. And Jesus, with authority, with the
power of his word alone – not a ritual, not a rite, the power of his word alone
– casts out the demon.
Yet it’s also in the
church where demons can be cast out. I
am not speaking of ritual or rite. I’m
not speaking of exorcism in the classic understanding of that. But we too have authority given to us by
Jesus. It’s not the same kind of
authority in the sense that we can command a demon to leave someone through word
alone. But we have the authority to love
one another. We have the command to love
one another. And love, in the way that
God loves us through Jesus, is powerful.
That’s the kind of power that Jesus wielded. He wielded love.
One of the best movies
I’ve seen in the last five years or so is Lars
and the Real Girl. It’s the story of
a young man named Lars Lindstrom. Lars
is possessed by the demon of fear. He is
so gripped by anxiety that he cannot bear to be touched or to touch someone
else. At the beginning of the movie no
one realizes this, not even Lars’ brother and sister-in-law. She is constantly trying to engage him, to
bring him out of his shell.
But Lars is also lonely
and in desperate need of human contact, so the way he solves this is by ordering
a doll. A life size, anatomically
correct doll. Her name is Bianca. Lars brings her to dinner with his brother
and sister-in-law. He creates a past
life for her. She was a missionary. She is suffering from some unknown
ailments. Of course, Lars family is
completely shocked by the fact that Lars thinks Bianca is a real girl and they
maneuver him to their doctor.
The doctor is a kind
and wise woman who realizes that Lars is suffering from a delusion that’s
helping him deal with a reality he otherwise can’t face. She doesn’t prescribe something for him. She doesn’t recommend that he be committed to
a hospital. She doesn’t even question
Lars about Bianca being real. She accepts
his delusion. If Bianca is real to Lars
then Bianca will be real to her. And she
tells Lars that she wants him to bring Bianca to see her once a week for some
blood work, and while Bianca is being treated she and Lars will talk.
The doctor also tells
Lars’ family to accept the delusion, to go along with it until Lars is ready to
let it go himself. So they agree. What they do next completely overwhelmed me
when I watched it. They went to their
church. They told the board – the
equivalent of our session – what was happening and asked them to play along
too. The people on the board agreed. They were nervous, taken aback to be
sure. But they went along with it.
Bianca was welcomed at
church. She was welcomed at
parties. She even got elected to the
school board. And it wasn’t because
anybody loved Bianca. It was because
they loved Lars. They loved him through
it. They used the authority of love that
was given to them to love Lars. They
loved him through the fears and the anxiety that possessed him, until they no
longer did. They loved him through it.
I know that it’s not
that simple. We are possessed by demons
that cannot always be cured by love alone.
But love is our starting point.
Love is the authority and the power that we have been given. Jesus commanded the unclean spirit, the
demon, to leave the man it possessed. And
it did because Jesus spoke with the authority of the Holy One of God. What do we know of God through Jesus? We know love.
It seems to me that if we’re going to be possessed, let us be possessed
by love. Let us love one another through
whatever demons grip our lives. Let us
love one another through it, just as God loves us. Amen.
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